Owe No Debt
by izanyas
Summary: Regrets were always Dazai's thing. Chuuya strives forward, doesn't look back, doesn't let the past catch up to him any more than he lets Corruption's bruises halt his momentum. It doesn't have to change just because he teamed up with Dazai once again. (It does). Soukoku, canon divergence.
1. Part I

Warnings: references to child abuse.

Cover art by midnightsunmadness on Tumblr, who kindly illustrated a scene from the last chapter of this story. Thank you again.

* * *

 **Owe No Debt  
** **Part I**

Chuuya woke up alone in the middle of the forest that Corruption had leveled. The first conscious breath that he dragged in ached, and it came out around Dazai's name with no need for thought, crawling out of his cracked lips before he was aware of it.

"Fuck," he said next, louder, and that hurt as well.

He must have been asleep for a while, because the blood had caked over his hands and forearms already. Chuuya rubbed his left wrist against a patch of nearby grass, until he could see the bruises marbling his skin. Blue and black.

The tips of his fingers always hurt the most after using Corruption. He pushed himself into a sitting position with his fists rather than the flat of his hands, and then bit his tongue as he stood up, every muscles in his body sore for the first time in years.

His clothes were folded on the ground, his gloves resting gently against the black of his coat. Dazai might as well have left a thank you note.

Chuuya couldn't help but smile.

His clothes were ruined anyway, except for the coat and gloves, so he rubbed the rest of the blood off on his pants. His face had been wiped free of it by a hand not his own while he slept.

Chuuya bent down to pick up the coat. It was awkward, balancing everything in his hands while trying not to bend any knuckle, but he managed somewhat. A quick glance to the barrack where Q had been kept was enough to tell him that he would find nothing there anymore; the thing had been mostly razed in the explosion that had gotten rid of the Guild's monster.

Taking a breath in preparation, he plucked his phone out of the coat's inner pocket. It seemed to be working, despite the shocks it had taken—this coat was _very_ good. Chuuya still winced with every press of his thumb on the screen, and again when he had to hold it against his ear.

 _"Nakahara-san,"_ came Higuchi's tense voice.

"Yeah. What are the news?"

 _"Are you all right? We've been waiting for you to return for—"_

"I'm fine, Higuchi," Chuuya cut in. He raised his free hand with the goal of running it through his hair—before thinking better of it.

He really wasn't used to dealing with the aftermath anymore.

"I'll be back within an hour. Q's with the agency by now." The thought stung, but Chuuya had been more or less ready for the possibility since Mori sent him anyway. "Tell me what's going on with us."

It was an effort, sounding self-assured rather than exhausted and in more pain than he'd felt in years, but it paid off. He practically heard Higuchi straighten up in her seat to answer him. _"Yes, sir. There's been no fight outside of your own confrontation, though I can't tell about the ADA. But…"_

Chuuya frowned. "But what?"

 _"Akutagawa-senpai is missing."_

He gave up, then, and did run his fingers through the sweat-sticky hair at his nape. "Well, shit."

* * *

The rest was out of Chuuya's hands entirely.

News of the Guild's whale-like ship scheduled to fall onto Yokohama reached him quickly enough. No one knew who had given the information to them, whether it was the agency or a traitor within the Guild; Chuuya ignored the stench of _Dazai_ all over them and didn't waste time asking Mori for orders either. Mori knew his worth in keeping their numbers tight and would have sent him down to deal with them anyway, so Chuuya went, regardless of the pain radiating through his body and his still-blackened hands. The skin of his fingers burned inside his gloves every time he moved. Chuuya hoped in spite of hope that he would have no need to fight today.

It wouldn't matter anyway, if the city burned.

Chuuya gave his orders and spent the rest of the day on the rooftop of headquarters, looking at the shimmer that Moby Dick drew against the clouds. Something this massive couldn't make itself completely invisible. Sunlight poured through it as it would broken glass; when Chuuya looked from the corner of his eyes, the whale's silhouette appeared to him in flecks of red, blue, green light.

"Are you worried?"

Chuuya turned his head sideways.

Kouyou crossed the length of the rooftop in long, easy strides, stopping right beside him. She took a glance at the thin strip of bruised skin between Chuuya's glove and his sleeve, and her lips thinned.

"Worrying doesn't change anything," Chuuya replied. "Either the thing will fall or it won't."

"You're saying we should put our trust into that fool?"

He smiled at her, brash and honest. "Akutagawa? Probably not. I doubt he's up there alone, though."

Kouyou leaned against the fence that Chuuya was sitting on. She looked over her shoulder briefly, down into the fall promised under Chuuya's feet. When she looked at him again, her face looked carved in stone.

Chuuya kept his smile in place. "Don't bother, ane-san," he said lightly. "I already know what you want to say."

"You shouldn't expect anything out of these people," she declared anyway. "Chuuya. You shouldn't expect anything out of Dazai."

"I don't fucking expect anything out of him."

She took hold of his wrist, her fingers digging into the blood stains and burst vessels. Chuuya didn't make any sound despite the pain, didn't even flinch as she drew blood with the tip of her long, painted nails. "You went out of control," she accused, venomous.

Chuuya shook her off. Let himself fall on the other side of the fence, toes beyond the edge of the roof.

He had never feared falling, for as long as he had been alive. There was no reason to.

"I did," he replied, shrugging. "It was necessary."

"Dazai told you it was necessary."

 _And he was right_ , he almost answered. "Our opponent almost made it out alive against Corruption," he said. "It was necessary, ane-san."

Kouyou was silent for a moment. The day was nearing its end, afternoon sky darkening to evening, red spilling from the west like blood over the city. In this kind of light she always looked like her whole body was an open wound.

Chuuya looked away. Up. Wishing there was a way to lower the whale's defenses so he could fly up and destroy it himself. He had the power for it.

He wouldn't mind dying while doing it.

"Dazai will not come back to us," Kouyou said, and Chuuya felt his blood turn hot and thick in his veins.

"Thank _fuck_ for that."

"So you say. Yet after four years of acting as if you couldn't be happier that he's gone, you entrust your life to him the moment he's by your side."

Kouyou's eyes were piercing as a hawk's. She didn't have a hair out of place, not even right after coming back from being held hostage by the agency; her kimono folded around her as neatly as if she had just committed murder.

She said, "We can't afford to lose an executive, Chuuya."

Chuuya exhaled through his teeth. He jumped over the fence and back to the safer side of the rooftop, weightless over the hand he put on top of it. The contact was still enough to make pain race up his arm.

He made a show of dusting his coat once he was next to Kouyou. She watched him, eager and afraid, and he knew that her own hand must be wrapped around the handle of her blade inside those wide sleeves of hers.

"You're upset," Chuuya declared. He had the satisfaction of seeing lose her composure for the barest of seconds then, as her face tensed. "Because of that girl of yours. The one that got away."

"Kyouka," Kouyou murmured.

"That's right. Kyouka." Chuuya had only ever seen the girl in passing, locked as she always was in Kouyou's quarters or hanging in Akutagawa's shadow. He remembered how her eyes looked, however. "I'm not some little girl you need to keep a watch on," he said lowly.

"Sometimes it feels like you are."

Chuuya's foot sank into the concrete when he stepped toward her, just enough to break it around the sole of his shoe—just enough to make the building shake under them. Kouyou paled but didn't bow down, not even when Chuuya walked close enough that she could probably feel his words against her face.

"The debt I owe you is immense," Chuuya said to her. "I will always be grateful for the chance you gave me. But you will not disrespect me like this again."

He felt the tip of her blade against the crook of his wrist like a bug's bite. He raised his hand without looking down, to avoid having blood stain his clothes once more.

It took a moment, but Kouyou relented. She huffed softly, lips stretching into a distant smile, blade sheathing itself back into her sleeve with only a whisper. "I do worry about you. We always seem to lose the people we thought we wouldn't. Dazai, Kyouka… It seemed so unthinkable for them to leave."

"Are you afraid I'll leave?" Chuuya laughed as he said it. "Ane-san, where the fuck would I go?"

"I remember a time when you would blush after cursing in front of me," Kouyou replied disapprovingly. Then, somber: "I am not afraid that you will leave. I am afraid that one day you will let Corruption ravage everything around you, and Dazai will not see fit to stop it ravaging you."

Chuuya didn't reply. He watched Moby Dick's glimmer in the red sky from the corner of his eyes and tried to recall those same musings in himself. The moment of white-hot fear the night before when Dazai had looked at him and let him _choose_.

He couldn't, though. All that came to his mind was the feeling of Dazai's cold fingers wrapped around his skin. Dazai's voice telling him to rest. Dazai breaking him free of the taint in his blood and making relief bloom in him, so much more powerful now than when he still took Dazai's presence for granted.

Kouyou sighed. Her hand reached up, and Chuuya let her run her fingers through his hair without a word. "This might well be our last hour on this earth," she said.

"It might."

"Would you have any regrets if it were?"

Chuuya chuckled. "Are you trying to get a confession out of me?" Kouyou's smile didn't reach her eyes. It never did. Now, though, it seemed misery clung to her skin like the sun's color to her hair. So Chuuya dislodged her hand from his nape and squeezed it between his aching fingers. "I don't give a shit about regrets."

"Yes," she replied, "you always were a headstrong boy."

He let go of her hand. "Now you're the one sounding like you're saying farewell," he mocked, staring into her eyes.

"Chuuya."

He hadn't heard his own name come out of anyone's mouth so softly in years. Not since taking the executive's seat that Dazai had vacated four years ago. Kouyou had latched onto nothing after that, and then onto the demon girl who bore the same ability as herself.

Chuuya did not have time in him for regrets. His life was a story of survival, of striving forward, of not looking back; it was dealing with teenage frustration by becoming the best martial artist in the mafia and it was doing what Dazai had done a hundred times better, so the bitter looks would stop following him, so Mori would stop looking at him in furious disappointment. It was picking up the pieces that Dazai had made of Akutagawa and giving the boy a job he could lead with minimal restraint.

No, Chuuya did not have regrets. Regrets were always Dazai's thing.

He watched the whale's see-through shape fall down toward the harbor with Kouyou standing still by his side. He watched a government plane crash into it from above, destroying it. He saw the great machine's belly hit the water, too far away to cause more than a minor flooding of the shore, killing no one.

He realized that he hadn't doubted for one second that Dazai would find a way to stop it.

* * *

Mori Ougai took over the aging, insane boss a week before Chuuya's second birthday spent between the walls of the port mafia's headquarters. He held an inheritance ceremony on the twenty-eighth of April, during a cold spring evening that left the women in attendance shivering, goosebumps riding over the skin of their bare arms.

It was during that ceremony that Chuuya met the boy-prodigy.

He had seen Dazai before. They had crossed paths in hallways, running errands, carrying messages. He had seen the other in the doctor's company every time doctoring was needed. He had looked into Dazai's eyes and found them lacking, and he had never thought about him more.

Chuuya left the ballroom where the ceremony was taking place long before his time was due. He opened one of the reinforced glass panels leading to the balconies outside, crawled to his knees, and made his way unseen behind the legs of all the guests. He stood up once he was out of sight and made himself weightless, until his feet stopped touching the floor he walked on and he could feel the air caught between his back and the façade of the building. Higher, higher, so that he had all of the city spread open beneath his feet, so that the expanse of gleaming water ahead shone like fire in the sunset and burned itself into his eyes.

And then something took him by the wrist, and he fell.

Weight settled itself back into Chuuya's body with violence. He opened his mouth but couldn't even scream; his heart had risen to his throat and choked off all of his airways. In the eternity between his race downward and the sudden halt it took, Chuuya felt, more than anything, the emptiness where his ability should be. It was as if he were trying to touch something without being able to feel it, no matter how strongly his fingers pushed, no matter how much of his own skin he split open in the process.

His shoulder screamed with pain when the resistance at his wrist cut his fall short. For a long moment Chuuya could do nothing more than dangle, eyes shut close and a helpless sob pressing against his throat, spilling bitter on his tongue.

He let it out, and he looked up.

The boy was the one holding him up. Both of his hands were holding onto Chuuya's wrist, and his face was red and sweaty from the effort. Chuuya looked at him with his mouth open, unable to speak any words.

"You might want to start climbing," the boy said, voice strained. "Before I drop you."

Chuuya closed his mouth.

He grabbed the upper edge of the topmost window of headquarters, right under the roof where the boy appeared to be lying down. Every push of his muscles ripped another terrified moan out of him—only adrenaline prevented his grip from trembling and letting go altogether. Chuuya hoisted himself onto the roof, blood pumping harder through him than he had ever experienced. The shaking started as his knees found traction onto the concrete and he crawled under the barrier. He kneeled there, a few feet away from the edge, completely unable to think.

The boy wasn't so still. He crawled back toward where Chuuya was sitting—slowly, until he looked sure enough that he wouldn't accidentally fall off. Then he sat onto his behind and peered at Chuuya through his hair, curious and amused.

Chuuya gasped in a breath before speaking. "T-Thank—"

"Oh, don't thank me," the boy cut in. His smile widened. "I'm the one who made you fall."

Chuuya could only stare at him in silence.

The boy chuckled, and said, "Sorry about that. I saw you floating there and I got so envious, I just had to do it."

"What the fuck?" Chuuya didn't realize that he had spoken at all until his words drew another smile out of the boy, colder and even less inviting than the first.

"My ability," the boy continued, "is to cancel other abilities."

There was silence. Chuuya's eyes were burning, watering, with how hard he refused to blink; his body was still caught in the stupor and relief of the previous minute, sluggish, slow; but the smile on the boy's face didn't disappear, and when Chuuya tried to press onto the ground and make it crack, his fingers trembled against it uselessly.

The boy laughed.

"Give it back," Chuuya gasped. " _Give it back_ —"

"It'll be back in a moment, don't worry."

"What the fuck," Chuuya repeated. "I could've _died_."

"But you didn't." There was nothing but honest glee on the other's face. No remorse and no worry. "Who knows, the drop from here is so long—you might even have been able to summon it in time to stop yourself from crashing."

"You don't know that!"

The boy rose to his feet with laughter racking through him. Red sunlight hit his face once he was up, and for the first time Chuuya noticed the stained bandages around his wrists and neck. The boy's eyes were still stuck to him—looking _down_ on him, mirth as cold as ice shining in them. Chuuya jumped to his feet and found, regretfully, that he couldn't make the rooftop tremble under his feet yet.

"You're crazy," he declared. Annoyingly enough, the other boy was a good head taller than him. "Do you attempt to kill everyone you fucking meet?"

"Do you swear like this when in ane-san's presence?" the boy replied, and Chuuya shut his mouth, face warm. The boy chuckled again. "I've been curious as to who you are. Nakahara Chuuya… I could only find out your name." His eyes roamed over Chuuya's body quickly. "Hard to believe you're not twelve."

Chuuya saw red. " _Fuck off_ ," he replied. "Who the fuck are _you_? Acting so smug just because the boss changed, huh?"

"I'm supposed to find myself a partner," he replied. "To start going on missions."

"Is that how you're going about it?" Chuuya scoffed. "No thanks."

"I haven't asked anything yet, pipsqueak."

Chuuya's foot moved forward on its own, still with only his body's weight for strength. The boy watched him approach without losing his smile.

Chuuya stopped a foot away, eyes trained onto the boy's hands, remembering the feeling of falling to his own death.

"Smart," the boy murmured.

"I can tell when I'm being made fun of," Chuuya retorted. "What do you want?"

The boy watched him. It was a piercing sort of scrutiny, the kind Chuuya only ever went through when he visited Kouyou of when running errands for the Black Lizard squad leader. Chuuya held the other's looks without flinching—and the boy smiled again, eyes alight with interest. "My name is Dazai," he said. "I'd like you to become my partner, Nakahara Chuuya."

Dazai extended a bruised hand forward.

Chuuya eyed it silently.

"You want me to explain my reasoning," Dazai sighed, once he understood that Chuuya wouldn't budge. "Fishing for compliments?"

"Considering punching you in the face, more like."

"If you can reach it." Dazai still looked like he thought Chuuya was beneath him. It wasn't even because of the comments on Chuuya's height; it was all in his eyes, uncaring even through his enjoyment. It made the short hairs at Chuuya's nape rise on his skin as if someone had pressed an ice cube against his spine.

"Why should _I_ want to partner up with you?" Chuuya asked between his teeth. "There's nothing in it for me."

"Mmh, perhaps not now. When I'm an executive, however—"

Chuuya laughed, bright and sudden. His chest deflated with it and his eyes burned with unspent tears—he had to turn away from the other so he could wipe them with the back of his hands.

"That's not very nice," Dazai commented. "I was being serious."

"An _executive_?" Chuuya couldn't even pretend to take him seriously.

But Dazai didn't seem fazed by it at all. If anything, his face relaxed. "Boss Mori has very high hopes for me," he said. "I anticipate that I'll be climbing the ranks very quickly."

"You're what, fifteen?"

"Fourteen."

"Fourteen," Chuuya repeated, lips stretched wide enough to show his teeth. "And I should invest my time with you for no reason but because you deluded yourself into thinking that maybe, in fifteen years, you'll be a fucking executive."

"Less than fifteen years," Dazai replied easily. "Five or six at the most."

"Right."

Dazai shook his head a little, so that his hair would stop falling into his eyes. They weren't black, Chuuya noticed then; they were brown, and the warmth in them was belied by an edge that he had only ever seen on the likes of Kouyou or Hirotsu. Staring into them for too long made his skin shiver as if wanting to jump off his bones.

He didn't dislike it. That was maybe the most surprising thing of all.

Dazai took a step forward. He was practically breathing down Chuuya's face, now, but Chuuya didn't move back. He threw back his head to stare right back at the other.

"I'm very close to Boss Mori," Dazai said. Chuuya could feel how the air moved out of his mouth—his face warmed before he could help it, but Dazai didn't comment on it, simply kept going as he was. "I really shouldn't be talking about this to anyone, let alone one of Kouyou's errand boys, but… I assure you that associating with me will only make it easier for you to make yourself known."

"Maybe I don't want to be known," Chuuya lied. "Maybe I'm fine being a messenger."

"Please"—and Dazai's voice was so dismissive, Chuuya felt it crawl over his skin unpleasantly—"this would be the most disappointing thing I've seen of you yet."

Chuuya took a step back. "You need to work on your people skills, _Dazai_."

Dazai laughed again. His voice broke for a second, making his face flush ever-so-slightly—Chuuya smirked in his direction once the other looked back. At least _his_ voice hadn't cracked in more than a year.

The other cleared his throat, hand over his mouth but not hiding the blush on his cheeks. "I've been looking for someone with a good ability," he said. "Seeing you earlier, I thought, why not? Gravity manipulation seems very useful."

Chuuya hit the ground with his foot, and the concrete cracked under his sole as if made of glass. _Finally_. "Yeah," he replied.

"You're my age too. You have no influence. You wouldn't hinder me."

"Boy, do you tempt me."

"See?" Dazai smiled, condescending. "An adequate match. We could do great things together, Nakahara Chuuya."

"Just Chuuya's fine."

"All right. Don't call me by my first name, though."

"I don't _want_ to."

"Still, you're a bit of a mystery, aren't you," Dazai continued thoughtfully. "The most I could gather out of Hirotsu-san was that you _begged_ your way into the mafia. Why's that? Is Chuuya even your real name?"

Chuuya's lips thinned. The hot animosity in his veins dwindled to cool suspicion, and Dazai missed none of it, his hard eyes peering into Chuuya's as if he wanted to split open his head and look directly inside. "That's none of your business," he answered.

"Fair enough," Dazai nodded.

Chuuya looked away. The sun was almost gone now, and the bay's waters looked nearly black. Because he and Dazai were standing so high up, the light still reached them, glowing around them the way Chuuya knew he glowed with his powers.

It was as though they were the only ones awake anymore. The last ones touched by daylight. The thought kept the chill of the height and evening at bay.

"You're interested," Dazai declared. Chuuya didn't look at him and didn't bother denying it. "You know I'm right."

"You probably say this to every idiot you try to rope into following you around like a dog."

"You're right, in a way," the other replied. "Because you're the only one I've asked."

And Chuuya couldn't help the tightness in his chest and the big, empty gap in him that always looked for praise. "Fuck you," he replied, heart beating fast. "I'm not so easy that I'll fall for that."

"Are you easy in other ways?"

Chuuya's foot smashed onto the rooftop, making the ground crack open under Dazai's feet—Dazai stumbled, just for a second, only quick enough to find his footing again.

It was enough for Chuuya.

His fist connected with Dazai's cheek, weighed only by his own physical strength; but Chuuya's physical strength was more than enough for him to feel the shock to Dazai's skull and how his skin burst beneath his knuckles. Dazai fell sideways, his smart mouth gasping now; when the whole of his body connected with the ground, Chuuya's heart soared with bone-deep satisfaction.

Dazai spluttered. He spat out pink-tinged saliva onto the ground. When he looked up at Chuuya, his eyes were wide with shock.

"Next time you try to know shit about me," Chuuya said, jaw aching around his smile and teeth bared, "make sure to ask around the dojo next to ane-san's house."

"You—"

Dazai, for the first time, seemed speechless. Chuuya burned the sight of his face to memory, savored each twitch of his lips on his own silence and watched with appreciation as Dazai's cheek turned from red to purple. The friction of his gloves had made him bleed, and Chuuya followed the first red drop as it rolled down Dazai's cheekbone and got absorbed by the cotton already stuck to some previous wound on his chin.

"I'll think over your proposal," Chuuya continued. He tugged his gloves back in place and ignored the joyful tingling in his fingers. _Never_ had punching someone felt so rewarding. He wasn't even mad anymore. "I'll be going now, if you don't mind."

Dazai laughed. He pushed himself back into a standing position and straightened his back so he could hover over Chuuya again—but one of his cursed hands was holding his cheek, and he didn't look so smug anymore. "You're an absolute pain in the ass," he said.

"That's nothing more than you deserve, _ass_."

"I know. It's sickening, how fitting this seems."

Chuuya smiled before he could help it, feeling warm in ways he hadn't in weeks, maybe even months.

The old boss was dead. Chuuya wouldn't have to run to and from corpse-riddled battlefields to count casualties anymore. And the new boss's pet project wanted him as a partner.

He didn't see Dazai's smile soften from amused to endeared.

"See you around," he said, turning on his heels. " _Dazai_."

His legs were shaking when he walked toward the stars, but only from excitement.

* * *

Chuuya had lied that day.

Abilities were a mystery to everyone as far as he knew. The mafia accepted them as unshakeable truth, but Chuuya didn't know anyone who actively researched the _truth_ of them. They just existed. They changed things about people's appearances, sometimes. There was no genetic way for Chuuya to be born with red hair, and yet somehow he was.

Some people took years to discover theirs, and some people knew theirs inside out as soon as they were born.

Chuuya was part of the latter. For the Tainted Sorrow had sung inside him for as long as he could remember. He came into the world without the fear of falling and without the fear of heights; he thought, when he allowed himself to, that maybe his recklessness in this had led his parents to being how they were.

He made things fly. He made himself fly. He crushed the ground under his feet. He turned himself as heavy as whales or as light as feathers.

When he was eleven, Chuuya's fear won over his love. He touched his father's bloody fist between blows and made him weigh nothing—less than feathers and less than mist—made him soar toward the sky as far as he could go, and then, before his love could win again, he let him fall.

He ran until he could convince himself that he hadn't heard the sound that his father's body made as it hit the ground.

It took very little to convince the beautiful and deadly woman that his mother had told him about to let him work for her. Some groveling, some tidying up, and of course, some flying. Kouyou was as cold to him as she was to anyone else, but she took him in. She gave him enough money for him to rent a room in one of the port mafia's establishments and sleep without fear for the first time in his life.

When Chuuya told Dazai, _There's nothing in it for me_ , he had been lying. He was interested in climbing the ranks. He was interested in proving himself worthy.

He was interested in Dazai.

Mostly, though, he was interested in what he knew he hadn't done yet. He was interested in the restless power in him that told him he could do so, so much more. That he could lose himself entirely to the fear that had made him kill his own kin—lose himself enough that he wouldn't feel _bad_ about it.

Three weeks after meeting Dazai on the rooftop of the mafia's headquarters, Dazai broke into Chuuya's room. He tried to wrestle Chuuya, and Chuuya pinned him down onto the floor without even breaking a sweat, lips stretched wide enough to match the gleeful smile on Dazai's face.

Dazai told him that he had a plan. A non-Mori-approved plan. And Chuuya agreed to it with only the heat in his veins for a reason.

That night, he used Corruption for the first time.

That night, Dazai Osamu touched the black-bruised skin of his wrist and made him stop.

That night, Mori Ougai upgraded him to a suite inside of headquarters, his thoughtful gaze crawling over Chuuya's skin like ants, and Chuuya hung heavier to Dazai's stiff shoulder, working pride out of the pain wrecking his entire body.

It _was_ sickening, how fitting it all seemed.

* * *

The port mafia needed Q back. Chuuya wasn't happy about it, but he swallowed down his protests in front of the other executives. He was the only one who disagreed with Mori on this.

Mori had a choice. He could send Kouyou for negotiations with the armed detective agency, as she had already proven to be able to establish non-violent contact with them, even if she had been a hostage at the time. Or he could send Chuuya.

Considering that Kouyou had flirted heavily with treason during her time as a hostage, the choice was quickly made.

Chuuya clenched his teeth on his own annoyance as he walked through Yokohama. Summer was never too hot on the city thanks to the sea-wind, but he made without his coat anyway—both because it was needless and because he was supposed to appear _non-threatening_.

It didn't matter how non-threatening he looked. Or that he did the polite thing and knocked before entering the agency. Yosano Akiko had a machete to his neck as soon as he stepped in, and a man he didn't know was pointing an actual gun in his direction.

"I come in peace," he drawled, annoyed. "Where's Dazai?"

The man with the gun seemed to struggle between his need to be polite and his need to be hostile. "No here," he settled on. "Why are _you_ here?"

"Come to finish our fight?" Yosano asked, not very good at hiding the excitement she felt at the idea.

Chuuya bared his teeth at her. "Tempting, but no. I do actually come in peace."

There weren't many people in the office, now that he was looking around. The boy with blond hair that he had met a few days prior was gone, and so was Dazai, of course. Out of the reports Chuuya had heard from Akutagawa and Kajii, only the weretiger seemed to be here.

He was a frail thing. Tall for his age but very skinny, with tan skin and white hair and obviously not-human yellow eyes. Chuuya spent a moment looking into the boy's curious face and wondering what he was hiding, for Dazai to call him by name with such affection on his voice.

"I need to thank you," he told the weretiger. The boy yelped and flinched back, and Chuuya ignored it. "I heard that you and Akutagawa killed that Guild guy and saved us all from inevitable death."

"Oh." The boy lowered the hand he had raised to cover his face. "Um. You're welcome?"

"Are you asking or saying it?"

The man with yellow hair stepped further into Chuuya's personal space, almost pressing his gun into Chuuya's face. "What do you want with us, port mafia executive?" he asked hotly.

"Get that thing out of my face," Chuuya replied. He touched his fingers to the mouth of the gun quickly and tried not to laugh when the thing fell out of man's hands, now weighing just enough to break open the floorboard without outright falling through it or dislocating the man's shoulder. The other made a sound of surprised pain and stepped back immediately. He felt Yosano's machete leave the back of his neck carefully as well. "I'm here for Q," Chuuya said once that was settled. "My boss is willing to open negotiations for his retrieval from the agency, and he sent me to conduct them…"

He trailed off, because a chill ran up his spine and took hold of his breathing, halting it suddenly. Chuuya turned on his heels with one hand raised and the other hovering uselessly at his hip—his brain chose this precise moment to remind him that Dazai had never given him his knife back.

The man standing behind him and Yosano was tall and grey-haired, with lines on his face that weren't at all from smiling. He looked down at Chuuya with neither contempt nor hatred, but Chuuya didn't for one second think that he wouldn't use the katana hanging from his hip if need be.

He had never felt so vulnerable in front of an opponent before.

"Honorable of a man like Mori Ougai to attempt negotiations before attempting murder," the man said. His voice was deep and his tone was absolute. "I would go so far as to say _unthinkable_."

Chuuya smiled faintly. It took effort like none other to lower his guard. "Well, no one's said anything about what happens when you refuse our offer," he replied. "But Boss Mori has really taken to the idea of a ceasefire of sorts between us, and wishes to extend it now that the Guild is gone."

"Has he."

He hadn't. Chuuya didn't know what Mori was planning, exactly, but there was no way he _wasn't_ planning something. He didn't think any of the other executives were in the know either.

Kouyou might have been, if she hadn't so openly let her support of the killer girl's defection show.

Dazai had been the only one Mori truly shared plans with. Dazai had been raised from infancy to be Mori's right hand man. For all Chuuya knew, Mori was still sharing schemes with Dazai even with Dazai on the side of the enemy.

Chuuya straightened up entirely, closing his legs once more and taking off his hat. "In exchange for that ceasefire, the mafia expects you to deliver Q to us without a fight."

The man—Fukuzawa Yukichi, obviously, stared at him silently for a moment before speaking again. "No."

Chuuya smiled. "We'll reign in Akutagawa as well." He heard the weretiger take a loud breath behind him. "Make sure he doesn't do anything stupid on his own anymore. Your employee will finally be left alone."

Fukuzawa looked over Chuuya's shoulder briefly, but his face didn't change. "Am I to expect that if I refuse, your man will be encouraged _not_ to leave Nakajima Atsushi alone?"

"That could certainly happen," Chuuya murmured.

Atsushi. That had been the name. Now that he was hearing again, Chuuya could recall Dazai saying it through bloody lips and with a smile.

"I see." Fukuzawa shook his head. "I must refuse anyway. Kunikida, walk our enemy out."

"Yes sir," the man with yellow hair replied instantly.

A single dark look in Kunikida's direction was enough to deter him from trying to lay a hand on Chuuya, but though Chuuya led himself to the door without prompting, he still said, "Tell Dazai to give me back my damn knife," to Yosano as he went.

He walked out of the office with Kunikida hot on his heels and irritation tight in his stomach. They stayed a distance away from each other as they walked down the stairs, Kunikida because he was probably wary after the gun thing, Chuuya because he was struggling to remember what Akutagawa had said about Kunikida's ability.

Chuuya was about to reach for the front door's handle when Kunikida asked, "Why did Dazai steal your knife?"

Chuuya's hand faltered in midair, weightless and unbearably heavy at once. "Because he's a piece of shit," he replied.

He heard Kunikida shuffle on his feet. When he spoke again, his voice was unfriendly but polite. "You're Nakahara Chuuya. His old partner. From… when he was with the port mafia."

"That's right." So Dazai had ratted him out to his new group. Chuuya didn't know whether to feel annoyed or happy about it, so he turned to look at Kunikida's tense face with a smile instead. "You're Kunikida Doppo. His _new_ partner."

At least according to Akutagawa's always mediocre reports.

Kunikida tensed but didn't lose his composure. "I hate to be associated with him like this," he muttered.

"We have so much in common already."

"I need to know if he's fraternizing with the enemy," Kunikida continued, serious as a tomb. "I don't like the two of you delivering private messages as if we're not at war with each other—"

"Hold on," Chuuya cut in. "First of all, there's no _fraternizing_ with Dazai. Everyone's an enemy to this fucking guy, so take this as advice and never let yourself believe that he's become your friend."

Kunikida's mouth was gaping slightly. It was cute, in a way.

"Second, even if this asshole had the ability to be nice to anyone, I wouldn't want anything to do with him."

"So…" Kunikida was visibly struggling with his own thoughts. "You two didn't like each other either?"

"No," and Chuuya wasn't lying, because _like_ was so much of a non-truth for what he felt about Dazai that even thinking it made his stomach revolt. "Dazai's only ever had one friend, and it wasn't me."

"Chuuya."

Chuuya's hands spasmed by his sides.

The most annoying thing about Dazai, possibly, was the fact that he was so good at disguising his own presence. Chuuya remembered telling him that thinking so much about dying made him feel like a dead man already, and it wasn't a lie; Chuuya had never managed to prevent Dazai from taking him by surprise when he wanted to.

The front door of the building was open from the outside, and in its frame stood Dazai, one hand over the handle and the other clutching Q's shoulder.

His eyes were unreadable.

Chuuya turned to him and channeled the pit of nervous heat in belly into tight anticipation—and a smile that he hoped looked as feral as it felt. "Dazai," he said, each vowel spreading over his tongue, warm and familiar. " _Give me back my knife_."

"Did you come all the way here just for this?" The smile on Dazai's lips was immediate, though insincere.

Q by his side had anxiety written all over his nightmarish face.

"I'm here for you," Chuuya told Q, and paid no mind to the small whimper that the atrocious boy let out. "The agency has kindly refused our offer for peaceful transfer, so it'll have to be war. Dazai," he barked at the other then, "give me the knife, and next time I ever agree to one of your stupid plans, remind me to punch your teeth out instead."

"If you can reach them," Dazai replied lowly.

He slipped a hand into the lapels of his beige coat without letting go of Q with the other. Chuuya's Ka-Bar emerged from the folds, the thin stripe of the blade not covered in cloth glinting icily.

Chuuya grabbed Dazai's wrist twenty centimeters away from his throat; only then did he realized that the knife's blade was turned toward Dazai. He had been so focused on stopping Dazai's movement, he hadn't seen the other hold it with the handle up front. Judging by Dazai's smirk, this had been intentional.

"Fuck you," Chuuya growled. He tore the knife out of Dazai's grip, or at least he tried to—Dazai let it go easily but hooked a finger under his glove as he did, cold against the heel of Chuuya's palm.

Chuuya couldn't help it; the skin-to-skin pressure made the bruises flare, and he winced.

Something dark went over Dazai's face, more reminiscent of year-gone times than all his bravado weeks earlier in the headquarter's underground had been. He took his finger out of Chuuya's glove carefully and stepped back.

"You're not going to be punching anyone's teeth in the near future," was all he said.

"Dazai," came Kunikida's furious voice then; Chuuya had almost forgotten that he was here. "Bring the kid upstairs, it's Atsushi's turn to keep watch."

Dazai took another long second to look away from Chuuya's eyes and over his shoulder instead. "Sure, Kunikida-kun."

"'Kid'," Chuuya sneered softly. "Is that what this is about, then?"

Kunikida made a confused noise. If Dazai understood what Chuuya meant—and he probably did—he showed no sign of it. He walked past Chuuya without another look, brushing their shoulders together, hand firmly stuck to Q's upper arm.

Chuuya adjusted his glove back in place. "You're pathetic," he said. "You're really going to end up dead, trying to live like this."

"Good," Dazai replied lightly. "You know that's all I've ever wanted."

 _Liar_ , Chuuya thought.

There was nothing more to be said. Dazai wasn't part of his life anymore, and Chuuya knew better than to want to change that. Not for anyone, and especially not for someone who was trying so very hard to wash his own hands clean of blood. He clenched his teeth on the dark, ugly shadow of nostalgia, bit into it until he tasted metal; then he pushed open the door in front of him and stepped out of the building, into the summer light, wind and seasalt on his tongue.

Chuuya's hands were already plenty tainted.


	2. Part II

Warnings: underage drinking/alcoholism, references to child abuse.

* * *

 **Owe No Debt  
** **Part II**

There was only one man that Dazai had called a friend, and it wasn't Chuuya.

Chuuya held no resentment for the fact. He hadn't called Dazai a friend either. Regardless of the full-bodied flushes, the tingling skin, the heady power trips of those years—he hadn't called Dazai a friend.

It didn't matter that his days were shaped around the other's presence. That Dazai made a habit of breaking into his home, and Chuuya Dazai's. That electricity sparked between them with all the strength of teenage want and lit fires in Chuuya's veins that took hours to abate.

Chuuya wasn't Dazai's friend. And Dazai wasn't Chuuya's friend.

Dazai was the hook piercing Chuuya's belly, and the line, and the fishing pole.

Chuuya was the fish tearing open his own guts trying to swim forward in spite of it.

* * *

Chuuya didn't make the connection between the rumored handyman Oda Sakunosuke and Dazai's _Odasaku_ until the man himself was standing at his front door, reeking of booze, Dazai slumped unconscious over his back.

"Who are you?" Chuuya asked, but he wasn't looking at the stranger anymore. He was eyeing the black bruises under Dazai's closed eye and the stains at his wrists that were weeping blood over his carrier's once-white shirt.

"Sorry," the man said quietly. "I'm Oda. Dazai passed out and I found this on him, so…"

He handed over a slip of paper, with some difficulty. Chuuya took it without letting his eyes leave Dazai's unhappy slumber and opened it mechanically.

 _Take me there if I die_ , it read. Followed by the address to Chuuya's new apartment.

"Fucking hell," Chuuya growled, crumpling the paper in his fist. "That's _my_ house, you fucking bastard!"

Oda didn't react to his outburst in any specific way. His eyes were thoughtful as he looked at Chuuya, but Chuuya had already had four years of dealing with a more powerful kind of scrutiny. "Come in," he said, defeated, and made way for Oda inside.

Oda nodded once in thanks as he went. He bent down carefully in the entrance, so that Dazai's head wouldn't hit the corners of the doorframe or the ceiling—he was a very tall man. Taller than Mori, even.

Chuuya scowled, and followed in.

His apartment was a mess. He had moved in only a day before, after years of saving money and months of meticulous selection between the options available to him not too far from headquarters. It was a four-room place with wide windows and clear corners; Chuuya had only finished putting up the furniture and gotten an electrician to come and plug in various living fixtures. Most of his belongings were still spread over the dusty floor in brown boxes.

"Sorry about that," he said, unnaturally low.

"S'alright."

Oda set Dazai down onto the couch. Feeling a little awkward, Chuuya hurried to take the pile of books off of it so Dazai could rest his feet—though he wished the other would sleep in discomfort and wake up feeling worse than before—and, as Oda straightened up free of his burden, watched the outline of the man's guns at his sides.

Oda caught him at it and smoothed the lapels of his jacket wordlessly.

Chuuya cleared his throat. "Do you want—something. I don't know what I have. Tea?"

"Tea sounds good," Oda replied, amiable enough.

"'Kay."

Chuuya shuffled in the direction of the kitchen and had to resist the urge to look back. He busied himself with the kettle and thankfully found a box of black tea bags in the blue crate full of non-perishables sitting atop his dining table. Filling two mugs with boiling water was a matter of minutes, and he was back into the odd atmosphere of his living-room too quickly for comfort.

Oda had taken over a chair and set it next to Dazai's head. He was looking down at him as he slept, and the expression on his face looked a lot like fondness, soft and kind and attractive.

Chuuya had never seen anyone look at Dazai like this. He hadn't seen anyone look at anyone like this.

 _You have_ , his mind said then; and Chuuya set the mugs down onto the coffee table loudly, breaking Oda out of his contemplation and himself out of the memory of his mother.

"Kind of you not to let him rot outside," he said, sitting on the table. He cut his own weight in half as he did, just in case. And then: "You're the one he calls Odasaku," he told Oda directly. "The one who refuses to kill."

Oda looked back at him without flinching and replied, "You're Chuuya. The other half of Double Black."

"First name already?" Chuuya asked, smiling darkly.

Oda shrugged. "That's how he calls you."

The tea was still too hot to drink. Chuuya brought it to his face anyway, warming his lips on the brim of his mug and letting steam dampen his nose. The day had been ice-cold, humid to the bone, and walking had felt like swimming. Chuuya had only had to go out once to take care of groceries—he had taken a day off to move out of the suite he had occupied since he was fourteen. His throat had the first itch of true ache in it, and for a moment he contemplated pouring honey into his tea, despite how childish that would make him look.

His eyes shifted back to Dazai before he could help it. Dazai's arm was dangling toward the floor, bandages stained and almost undone. Chuuya leaned over the table to reach it with his hand and lift it back onto Dazai's lap. He felt himself sink heavier onto the table as soon as his skin touched Dazai's, but right now, he didn't care.

Oda was looking at him with kind eyes when he straightened up. Chuuya didn't bother explaining himself for it.

"He's tired," Oda said into the silence.

"We all are."

"It only took him two drinks to be done. I think he was drunk before we even met at the bar."

Chuuya knew. Dazai and himself had taken to drinking in different ways and as many others in the mafia did; but they were young, the youngest to achieve this level of notoriety; Dazai had become an executive in four years as he had promised on the day they met and Chuuya was at the head of his own team, mostly aimed for negotiation work and recruiting, like Kouyou had before him. The brunt of his strength rarely came to use more than once a month. For a year now Chuuya lived through days when he didn't need to hide his forearms from the world, because the bruises were so faint as to be unnoticeable.

For a year now he and Dazai had ended their missions with wine and liquor.

It had been two weeks since his last deployment with Dazai. Corruption had only been in use for thirty seconds, but his arms were still yellow. His fingertips still sore. The inside of his wrists, just peeking from his sleeves, was solidly marked.

"I'm not his watchdog," Chuuya told Oda evenly. "It's his problem if he can't get his head out of the bottle anymore. He goes out with you more than me anyway."

"I can't exactly order an executive around."

Chuuya laughed. "Please, Oda. It's not like he gives a shit how disrespectful _you_ are."

"He doesn't with you either," Oda pointed out.

"Are you kidding? He's been shoving his new title into my face every time I open my mouth to him."

 _But not truthfully_ , Oda seemed to want to say. _Not seriously_.

"Dazai is a shit executive," Chuuya said, breath warm over the nervousness that hadn't left him. "Oh, he's a strategic genius. Absolutely fit to be up there with Boss Mori or Kouyou-ane-san. But he can't handle people."

"And you can?"

Chuuya felt the laughter leave him. "Drink your tea," he said.

Oda took his mug but didn't lift it up. It sat in his lap, between his tan hands, burning against the top of his thigh. "I'm asking because I'm curious," he told Chuuya. "You're only what, eighteen?"

"So's Dazai."

"But you're not an executive."

"Indeed," Chuuya murmured coldly. "I am, however, still your superior."

The silence that followed was icy. Chuuya felt it through his clothes the way he had two weeks ago after Dazai pushed the inferno out of him with a flick of his finger and Chuuya fell onto snow-covered ground. So cold it burned. When he had touched it with his fingers, the pain had been so great that he had almost screamed.

He thought he felt the same now. As if all the fire in him had turned to frostbite.

Oda relented without much grace. He took the tea to his lips and drank half of it in one go, grimacing about the heat but not flinching away from it. Chuuya mimicked him silently and looked at Dazai again.

"Do you know where he gets those injuries?" Oda asked.

His tone was enough to confirm that he wasn't asking to know for himself.

Chuuya didn't answer. He swallowed his scalding and tasteless tea, eyes fixed onto the untied gauze hanging limply from Dazai's wrist and remembering the stitches that he had sewed himself into the thin skin right under.

He felt the heat of Oda's eyes on him as if it were weighed by the Tainted Sorrow; he felt that if he were to stand up now, he would sink through the floor without needing to use it at all.

 _Chuuya_ , his mother's voice rang into his ear. Soft like a breeze. _Where did you get those injuries?_

Odasaku left a few minutes later. It was only as the other murmured his goodbyes that Chuuya realized they had been whispering all along, voices soft so as to keep Dazai from waking. He didn't know how he felt about that. There was a frustrated tension inside him that didn't only come from the stress of moving or the unbearable kindness in Odasaku's eyes—the unbearable _regret_ , unmistakeable for pity, because it didn't come at all from a position of superiority.

Odasaku looked at Dazai on the couch like this. Affectionate and worried. And he looked at Chuuya with a bit of the same despite not knowing him at all.

Chuuya superposed two boxes by the window next to the couch and sat on them, weightless, a cigarette stuck between his dry lips. The cold night air creeped down his throat alongside the smoke and froze inside his lungs.

He didn't move when he felt Dazai's foot nudge his lower back. "Keep your damn hands away from me," he muttered. "Those boxes can't handle my weight."

"I always forget how heavy you are, for your size."

Dazai's voice was low and raspy. Chuuya looked into the open glass pan of his window and saw the other's reflection sit up on the couch, looking around quickly.

"So this is your new place," Dazai said.

"Like you didn't fucking know."

"I haven't _broken in_ yet."

Chuuya crushed the stub of his cigarette out onto the windowsill, burning the first black stain onto his new home and listening to the sizzling sound it made as the ember touched frozen condensation. "Hopefully you won't feel the need to," he replied.

He hopped off the boxes lightly and dusted the front of his shirt. There was a small tea stain near his cuff, he noticed, and Dazai saw it too; though when Chuuya turned to look at him properly his alcohol-hazy eyes were looking at Chuuya's skin more than his clothes.

"I was awake," Dazai chose to say. "When Odasaku was here."

Chuuya flicked his tongue, annoyed. "You even bother your friends like this then?"

Dazai didn't answer him. He pushed himself off the couch entirely and wavered only a second on his feet as he stretched his hands. The gauze fell from his wrist then, and though it was dark, Chuuya could still see the newest and inflamed addition to Dazai's ever-scarred arms.

He took Dazai's wrist between his fingers without thinking and let his thumb press onto the stitches. Obviously, Dazai winced. "I told you to take care of that," Chuuya seethed. "Do you want to get an infection?"

"Your stitches are fine," Dazai replied with a fleeting smile. There was new blood along his jaw, Chuuya noticed, and the injury around his eye had been dressed with new gauze. Again.

Chuuya dropped Dazai's wrist. As expected, he found his ability cut off from him, because Dazai never passed up an occasion to leave Chuuya disarmed.

They looked at each other for a moment. Because of Dazai's latest growth spurt, Chuuya had to strain his neck more than usual to do so; and Dazai smiled at that, with a glint in his eye that spoke of as much amusement as it did heat.

Heart fluttering in his throat, Chuuya said: "I can't always be here to keep you from dying."

The smile on Dazai's face didn't disappear, though the heat did.

"Then don't," he replied. "You'd be doing me a service, really."

"I don't want to do you any services. I just can't have you dying stupidly on me."

"This is truly the rock or the hard place for you."

"You wish," Chuuya mocked, before blushing harshly—and Dazai laughed, full and open in the silence. " _Shut up_ ," he said between his teeth, "I was talking about your pathetic lack of physical strength."

"I'm strong enough to keep my dog in line," Dazai replied with a smirk.

"That's because Akutagawa is even weaker than you. Asshole."

Dazai hummed, neither confirming nor denying it. "You should think about taking one," he said. "A dog."

"A dog," Chuuya replied flatly.

"You've got the room for it now. Who knows, it might soften you up, make you nicer."

"I'm _plenty_ nice."

"And yet you never are to me," Dazai whined, so Chuuya rolled his eyes and turned his back to him with the goal of heading straight to his bathroom and drowning in his brand new bathtub. Dazai caught his shoulder before he could, though. "Truly, Chuuya," he said. "Why don't you take a student? I thought you wanted to be an executive one day too."

Chuuya dislodged Dazai's hand from his shoulder. "I don't want some kid following me around."

"You have to. All the others have one." He felt Dazai approach, the end of his shoe knocking lightly into Chuuya's heel and his hot breath running over Chuuya's ear. Chuuya stood still and tried his best to ignore it as he spoke again. "I hear I was a very rewarding apprentice. Akutagawa sucks, but even he's interesting. And you _are_ good with people."

Chuuya jutted his elbow backwards—was met with empty space as Dazai sidestepped him, chuckling darkly. When he turned around, the other was looking even more out of it than he had before. His one visible eye was unfocused and his face was shiny with sweat.

"Go the fuck to sleep," Chuuya said, disgusted. "And throw yourself out before I wake up tomorrow morning if you don't want me to do it by kicking in your ribs."

"Do you want to know what I think, Chuuya?" Dazai asked.

Chuuya tensed immediately. The lights overhead were off, and everything that he could see came from the open room of his kitchen. In the soft glow of it Dazai's face looked like a doll's.

"I don't," he replied tightly.

Dazai smiled. "I think you're scared of taking a student," he said. "I think you're scared that if you do, you'll turn into your father."

There was a beat, filled with dreadful silence. It took a long time for Chuuya to manage to open his mouth again, and when it did, nothing came out, not even air.

Dazai's eyes weren't as kind as Odasaku's had been. His were filled with pity first and worry second. And Chuuya could not look past the first now. Not with childhood terror solidifying in him like blood turning to scabs.

His fist unclenched by his side with conscious effort on his part. "Get out," he managed.

"No," Dazai said merrily.

"Dazai." Chuuya brought a hand up and rubbed it over his face. "I'm too fucking tired to deal with you right now, but if I have to beat your ass I will. For once in your life can you just _leave it alone_."

"How often did he beat you?" Dazai cut in, and every single one of his words felt like a blade on Chuuya's throat, cutting him open and whistling through the air like a child's scream. "It was actually really hard to track you down at all, I only managed about six months ago, and that's because I saw your mother in town by pure accident and she looked so much like you—"

He shut up.

Chuuya's hands were turning purple. The fading yellow bruises were filling with blood again, but Chuuya hardly felt the pain of it until Dazai actually tried to touch him—at which point he tugged his arm back so suddenly that not only did his skin burn, his shoulder screamed too, sore beyond measure.

"Drop it," he said, when Dazai tried to approach again. "It's not dangerous or anything, I don't need you."

"It looks like…"

"Yeah. It's not."

Chuuya hadn't had this happen to him since he was eleven. He took a slow breath, eyes close, and let his hands relax by his sides until only the burn remained. It felt, as always, as if a colony of ants had taken refuge under his skin and started biting off chunks of it with their tiny teeth.

When he looked at Dazai again the other's gaze had lost its vicious edge. "You must hate me," Dazai said conversationally.

Chuuya snorted. "Yeah, I fucking do."

"Not like this." Dazai's mouth twisted into another smile, one darker and more painful than the previous. "You must resent me. Seeing the way I treat Akutagawa."

There was no answer. Chuuya clenched his teeth and willed away the nervous energy in him, the push of fright-born power in his limbs that made blood vessels burst open despite themselves. He looked sideways, out through the snow-covered window, and massaged his own wrists as gently as he could.

It took a moment, but the pain stopped much more quickly than Corruption's aftermath. Chuuya's skin stayed blue and purple under his own fingers, but he wasn't feeling it anymore. He dropped his hands by his sides slowly.

"Chuuya," Dazai murmured. He was still looking at Chuuya's hands. "Your mother's still alive."

Chuuya didn't know how to reply to that. _I don't care_ would not be accurate; _I know_ would've been a lie, though he had wished—he had wished. A long time ago. He had hoped that she would stay alive. So she could maybe grow to forget him and what he had done.

His throat was tight, his face warm, when he spoke. "Get out of my house, Dazai."

"No," Dazai repeated—Chuuya felt fury unfurl in him like the ugliest of flowers, but as he was about to open his mouth and yell, Dazai said, "You should go talk to her."

Not for the first time since meeting him, Chuuya almost choked on his own surprise. "Are you _out of your mind_?"

"Why not?" Dazai crossed his arms in front of him. "There's nothing to say that you can't."

Dazai was so obviously drunk. Not in the fun, good way either. He had the sluggishness of heavy drinkers and the flush to indicate how little control he had over his own words and actions right then; it was the only reason, Chuuya told himself, why Dazai even got close enough to grab the side of Chuuya's shirt as he did then. Chuuya hated beating on weakened adversaries.

"I could tell you," he said, oversweet breath rushing along the skin of Chuuya's face hotly, "how she reacted when you disappeared. I know everything now. I could tell you where your dad's buried."

"I don't want to hear it," Chuuya replied.

Dazai laughed, mean, uncaring. "You're so cold, Chuuya." His hand rose up to grab Chuuya's shoulder instead of his side—and it was as much to keep Chuuya still as it was to steady himself. "Letting your own mother think you're dead. How cruel can you be?"

"Dazai—"

Chuuya shut up when Dazai's other hand touched his cheek. Cold-fingered and rough-skinned.

"I really don't get you," Dazai murmured. "If I found out that I still have family somewhere I'd be dying to see them for myself." His fingers traced the side of Chuuya's face until they reached his hairline, at which point Chuuya grabbed Dazai's wrist forcefully and pulled away.

"If you can run your mouth then you can _run_ ," Chuuya growled. "I suggest you start now."

"See, this is why I hate you," Dazai smiled.

In answer, Chuuya did the next best thing to using his ability and destroying his brand new apartment; he hooked a foot around Dazai's ankle and pulled, making Dazai fall to his backside with a very satisfying grunt of pain.

His heartbeat was still hurried as he looked down on the other. Still uncomfortably violent in his throat. But this was good. This was familiar. He could muster up some mocking, even if just for show.

"Ah," he sighed. "I've missed making you bite the dust."

"I haven't," Dazai replied, strangled.

"Maybe we should spar sometime soon."

"Maybe you're right after all," Dazai snapped back as he got himself to his feet once more, wincing. "Maybe you're too hard to love even for a mother." He avoided Chuuya's half-hearted punch with a laugh and waltzed toward the door, loose with alcohol more than true confidence. "I'll be taking this then"—his hand opened the first drawer of the wooden cabinet near the entrance and pulled out a key—one of Chuuya's spares.

"You _won't_ ," Chuuya said, offended.

"Would you rather I break in?"

"I would rather you never fucking showed your face to me again!" Chuuya walked toward the entrance himself as he said it and only stopped short of actually butting his head into Dazai's body. He stared up at Dazai and tried to muster anger and nothing else, no shock, no relief, none of the ebbing fear from earlier. He didn't twitch as Dazai looked at his hands again with something a little too close to remorse.

"I wonder what Odasaku would think, if he saw us now," Dazai said. Of all things.

Chuuya resisted the urge to snort again. "Probably that you're an insufferable child."

"He already knows that. That's not what I meant."

But though Chuuya was curious what Dazai meant, he didn't ask. He'd had enough of Dazai's mind games for the evening.

"Whatever," he said. "Just go. I'm tired."

"Knowing him, he'd think this is good for me. I bet he likes you too—he never minds anyone. It'd be interesting to see Odasaku truly _hate_ someone, maybe even enough to make him go for the kill—"

Chuuya pushed his palm onto Dazai's mouth and groaned, "God, do you _ever_ shut up?"

Dazai's face had stilled in a parody of humor, still drunken and hazy, still twisted on a smirk Chuuya knew was meant to inspire disgust. Still looking at him as coldly as if he wished to encase him in ice.

His skin was warm under Chuuya's fingers, though. A little damp from the whiskey-heat maybe, but warm. When Chuuya pressed the pad of his index against the edge of Dazai's chin, he felt his heartbeat underneath, as strong and steady as his own.

Dazai ruined it by opening his mouth and licking wetly against Chuuya's palm. " _Gross_ ," Chuuya protested, tugging back his hand as if he had been burned.

"Not as gross as your face," Dazai replied. Then, pocketing the key anyway: "Take care of those bruises, Chuuya."

"Why do you care?" Chuuya asked, suspicious.

Dazai shrugged. "Just being polite. Also, I'm pretty sure sparring won't be any fun if you can't throw a damn punch."

"I still have legs."

"Trust me, I know." Dazai opened the door behind himself without looking, and before he even spoke again his look made Chuuya's blood freeze in his veins. "Think about it," he said. "Do you really want to spend your whole life pretending you don't have someone out there waiting for you?"

He left Chuuya like this, standing in the middle of a place he couldn't call home yet. His hands full of blood and his heart full of fear.

* * *

Chuuya received a text that same night. He never opened it and never read the address he knew he'd find on it. For months his message notifications bore the number (1), until the phone itself got destroyed one day and Chuuya thought, _too bad_ , not knowing whether what he felt was disappointment or relief.

Dazai didn't message him the address again, because Dazai had defected and disappeared off the surface of the earth by then. The man with kind eyes that Dazai had called _Odasaku_ with such childish pride was dead, the mafia's top intelligence agent was a traitor, and Double Black quickly became a worthless memory that Chuuya couldn't hang on to for authority. He threw himself into work, filled in the executive's spot that Dazai had vacated, and closed another page of his life.

He strove forward.

Sinker.

* * *

Kouyou caught Chuuya on his way back from his search round three days after he visited the agency. She caught him as the day died, blue-pink-red, shining off of her like stage lighting. Chuuya nudged off the hand she had wrapped around his shoulder and said, looking up at her: "I'd appreciate if you stopped being so familiar."

She only faltered a little. "Oh, how I wish I could still tell you to watch your tongue."

He smiled, in spite of his irritation. "Just the touching," he explained, throwing a pointed look at her hands. "You never used to be like this with me, and I'd like not to become replacement for a little girl when in my twenties."

"I see." Kouyou folded her hands back into the lapels of her clothes. She looked more menacing with them hidden than out, Chuuya found, but he didn't take back his words. "Boss asked to see you," she said then.

Chuuya hid the immediate fatigue he felt at that habitually. He followed Kouyou to the elevators without a word, straightened his shirt and waistcoat and wiped the dust from his pant legs. The shoes would have to wait for later. Kouyou observed him all the while, her face as terrifying and unreadable as it always was.

He would always be afraid of her, he thought. He could grow as old as his lifestyle allowed and still feel the need to shake at the knees in front of her, the way he had all those years ago when he found her. Stumbling on his own words and spitting blood as he breathed.

"No clue yet?" Kouyou asked softly.

Chuuya glanced at her. "None," he admitted. "Either the special ability department is hiding them or they've all disappeared off the surface of the earth. Either way, I'm going to have to talk to them."

"You'll need clearance for that."

Chuuya looked pointedly at the ceiling of the elevator. "I'm getting it," he replied.

It made Kouyou huff, almost snort. "Careful, Chuuya," she said with an edge to her voice. "That's another traitor you're talking about contacting."

"Should you really be talking about treason, ane-san?" Chuuya snapped back. "I don't see Mori forgiving you for that spiel with Kyouka-chan any time soon."

Kouyou's eyes were hard as steel. "I don't see him forgiving you for failing to bring Q back to us," she said.

Chuuya stepped toward her with intent in his feet and violence in his blood; his shoulders ached with tension, his mouth stretched into a smile; and through the clean folds of Kouyou's silks he heard the whisper of her blade coming out of its shield.

The elevator's doors chimed open.

It took less than a second, but to Chuuya it felt like an eternity. He made himself swallow back the offense and watch as Kouyou did the same—hers stained with worry. "We'll settle this later," he threatened in a low voice.

"We will," she acquiesced.

Chuuya didn't bother showing his ID to the two men watching them nervously. He strode up the corridor leading to Mori's office and made his steps heavier, so the tension could seep out of him and through the floor every time his feet touched ground. Neither of the guards shadowing him as he walked made any mention of the noise he made like this.

Mori was standing by the window when he entered. He had a thin stripe of handwritten paper in his one hand and the other, gloved, resting onto the glass in front of him.

"Boss," Chuuya said, bowing.

He heard Kouyou enter the room behind him, silent as an owl. She didn't greet Mori.

"How went the search for the Guild's remaining members?" Mori questioned as Chuuya straightened up.

"Not well," Chuuya replied. "Can't find the body of the leader, can't find anyone else. Most of them are probably gone, but…"

Mori hummed. "We'd know if they had fled by boat or plane," he commented. He turned away from the view of Yokohama and toward Chuuya instead, handing the paper over. Chuuya stuck his hastily-folded coat under his armpit and took it between his fingers, and his eyes widened a bit as he saw the handwriting on the page. "I'm sure you recognize this?" Mori asked, amused.

Chuuya's fingers tightened on the paper. "What the fuck does Dazai want now?" he asked in lieu of answering.

"Read it, Chuuya-kun." It took strength of will to rip his eyes away from Mori's enjoyment and turn them back to the paper at hand, and it turned out to be futile, because Mori explained himself anyway. "It seems the agency's incompetence knows no bounds," he said. "They've lost Q."

Kouyou made a faint sound. Chuuya barely heard it through the ringing in his ears. "I'm going to _kill_ him," he said.

"I'm sure Dazai-kun's death will come in due time."

"How the fuck did they lose him? How do you even—" Chuuya choked. Breathed in. "The fucking _morons_."

"Who took him?" Kouyou asked, walking up to Chuuya's level with barely a noise. Her eyes were fixed onto the paper as well. "And if I may… why did Dazai tell you about it?"

"I'd like to know that as well," Chuuya added, regardless of propriety. He was too angry to care.

But Mori didn't seem offended in the least. If anything his eyes had that morbid glow in them that they usually only possessed when his ability was running, and Chuuya felt cold sweat gather at his nape despite himself, felt his muscles flinch involuntarily as memories of that same look in different settings—at a different age—whispered tickling fears into his ear.

The bruises on his hands flared very slightly.

"The agency is kindly reconsidering your offer, Chuuya-kun," Mori said, death on his voice. "Fukuzawa is sending Dazai to Kumagaya and requests backup from us, as he doesn't have the manpower to spend more than one man on the job…"

"Kumagaya?"

"The location where the ministry's special ability department probably took Q."

Chuuya brought a hand to his forehead and rubbed, as hard as he could without outright splitting skin. "Fucking _Sakaguchi_."

"Why would the agency want Q out of the ministry's hands?" Kouyou questioned. "Shouldn't Dazai and Sakaguchi Ango get along, by virtue of both having betrayed us?"

Chuuya had never gotten to the root of what had happened to Oda Sakunosuke. The man had been honored as a member of the port mafia for taking out their enemies by himself… and that same night, Dazai had disappeared. That same night, Mori declared Sakaguchi Ango a traitor alongside his own future right-hand.

He had never seen Mori look more terrifying than he had as he said Dazai's name then.

But Sakaguchi Ango had been part of whatever Dazai had going on with Oda. Chuuya had met Sakaguchi more often than Oda, more often that _Dazai_ at one point, because he actively worked alongside the man until he was revealed a spy. If Sakaguchi was involved in whatever had killed Oda…

Dazai held grudges. That was maybe the one thing Chuuya admired in his ability to regret everything he ever did. He held on to grudges as hard as if they were supporting him, kept them close enough to breathe in every minute of every day. Dazai sustained his violence on them. He sustained his reasons to live on them.

Or he had, at least.

"Fukuzawa Yukichi has probably grown fond of the boy," came Mori's voice. It sounded distant. "He has a talent for taking in strays."

"So," Chuuya let out, raising his head to look at his boss, "does that make Q a member of the agency?"

Mori was positively brimming with hatred. He smiled, teeth bared and ice-cold aura seeping through Chuuya's clothes, flesh, bones; when he spoke again his voice was higher for the rush of adrenaline in it and cut through the air with scalpel-like precision. "We shall make it so he _never is_."

* * *

Taking Q out of Yokohama was a good plan. An easy plan. The mafia was loath to leave the port out of their sight and possibly give way to the police or the ministry; _Chuuya_ was loath to leave Yokohama, every time he had to, because the city as a whole was home to him for lack of having an actual place to call such.

Taking Q out of Yokohama and to the sweltering mid-August heat of Kumagaya was a plan that could not have been designed by someone less evil than Sakaguchi Ango.

Chuuya was drenched in sweat by the time he exited the train station. It wasn't just his shirt sticking to his back, it was his waistcoat too; he took it off only a few minutes in and only managed to keep his gloves on because he didn't want to suffer the inquisitive looks of the crowd around him. He kept his hat on to protect himself from the sun, but it still beat at him relentlessly, slicking his temple with sweat and making drops of it run down his back uncomfortably.

Stepping through the streets felt like stepping into an oven would. The wind was scorching, the ground hot enough for him to feel it through his shoes. Chuuya's throat was parched before he even made it to the hotel whose address was scribbled onto the paper in Dazai's ridiculously bad handwriting. The place wasn't even two streets away from the station.

He stepped into the lobby, air conditioning hitting him full force and turning his skin to instant shivers. And then he dropped the paper and the waistcoat to catch the thing flying at him too fast to be unintentional.

The fingers if his left hand buried themselves into plastic and then rubbed against the smooth, soft content inside; Chuuya relaxed his hold on the handle of his knife and lowered the bag, and Dazai was sitting there in a leather armchair, looking infuriatingly refreshed.

"I got you clothes," he said.

Chuuya threw the bag back at him. "I don't want them."

"We don't know how long this is gonna take us and it's forty degrees outside, do you really want to _melt_?"

Chuuya ignored him. He walked past the sitting lounge and toward the counter where a woman was sitting, the badge at her chest reading _Yako_. He talked to her in a low voice, booked a room indefinitely. If her nose flared a little at how pathetic he looked from the sweat, she masked it quickly enough once he handed his credit card.

"Careful, Miss," Dazai said from his seat. "That one's a criminal."

Yako laughed awkwardly, looking between the two of them. Chuuya pried the keycard out of her painted fingers and tried to let none of the anger he felt show on his face as he smiled.

Dazai stood up gracefully as he walked by again, hands full with the plastic bags. He was dressed for the heat, a white shirt with short sleeves and very thin slacks; but his arms and throat were as wrapped up as ever, which made Chuuya rather sure that Dazai would suffer just as much as he did once they went back out.

And he wanted to kick himself, really, for already thinking in _they_.

Dazai didn't ask before entering the room Chuuya had booked and Chuuya didn't try to stop him either. "Put the damn clothes on the bed," he just said, before proceeding to lock himself in the bathroom and strip naked as fast as he could. He had to peel the pants off his legs slowly, they were so sticky.

The cold shower was a wonder on him. He felt the sweat run down his body and his head cool, hair flat against his face, clearing his thoughts as much as his skin. It took a long time before he felt truly cold, and by then he had washed himself from head to toe, the tiny room smelling strongly of lavender from the hotel's free shampoo sample that he had used.

The air wasn't hot anymore when he stepped out. Dazai must have turned on the AC. He felt it on his skin as he dried himself and tried to ignore the full-body shudder that threatened to shake him at the difference in temperature.

Chuuya walked back into the room with the towel wrapped around his hips. Dazai was sitting at the desk, facing the room, drinking juice out of a can. His eyes followed Chuuya around the room, but he made no comment.

There wasn't much inside the bag, and what was there wasn't as atrocious as Chuuya had feared. It made suspicion run up his spine, and he looked at Dazai as he spoke, fingers pressed to what felt very much like silk. "What's this?" he asked.

Dazai finished slurping—loudly—before answering. "A peace offering."

"You bought me underwear too."

"My boss is very thorough," Dazai replied, bashful. "Trust me, I want nothing less than to be in this hell town with you, buying your underwear for you."

Chuuya snorted before he could help it. "That's what you get for losing Q, you absolute disaster."

This seemed to make Dazai sober up, at least. The smile left his face and the warmth his eyes—more completely and quickly than it had in their last three encounters. Chuuya left him to it, slipped on the silk shirt, and didn't comment on how close to being perfectly fitted to his size it was.

At least Dazai was kind enough to look away when he dropped the towel. The room felt warm, despite the AC.

"I'm not letting you get Q again this time," Chuuya declared once he was dressed.

"And you plan to stop me all by your lonesome?"

"I could flatten you into the ground if I tried, Dazai."

Dazai didn't deny it, at least. "Well, Boss said it was fine if you took him. As long as he's out of these guys' hands."

There was something on Dazai's voice. Resentment. It was strong enough that Chuuya couldn't hear any lies under the weight of it, though he had no doubt that they were there. "So it really is him," he said.

Dazai blinked at him. "Who?"

"Sakaguchi Ango."

The slacks, similar to Dazai's, were a bit too long for Chuuya. He sat on the edge of the bed in the silence that followed and folded the hems—he would prefer to sew them that way, but he didn't have the material on him. Or the time to go to a tailor. Chuuya looked up again, found Dazai sitting shell-shocked on his chair, and stilled.

He frowned. "Don't tell me you didn't know."

"I did," Dazai said. He shook his head—his hair was pinned back, Chuuya realized. No bangs to hide behind. It left Dazai's forehead visible, surprisingly wide, and his face clearer. Chuuya held Dazai's gaze as long as he could before his eyes inevitably wandered to the shape of his face again. Familiar and foreign. His own felt hot by the time Dazai spoke. "I just didn't think I'd hear his name come out of your mouth, is all."

"Why not?" Chuuya asked, looking resolutely down. He tugged his shoes toward him as an excuse for the avoidance. "I used to work with the fucking mole."

"That must be so _grating_ to you, Chuuya. Not one, but two traitors right under your nose."

Chuuya hissed a short breath through his teeth. He stood up, fixed the cufflinks of the shirt, slipped on his gloves; then, turning toward Dazai, he ordered, "Let's go."

He barely heard Dazai's reply of, _So curt_. The door's lock clicked shut behind them once they were out. Chuuya kept his hat in his hands until they made their way outside, and had to restrain himself from making a noise of discomfort as the scorching wind found him again. His shower-cool skin heated up in seconds, and even the soft caress of silk on his back became too much soon enough.

"Do you know where he is or do we have to start blind?" he asked over his shoulder.

"Who do you take me for?" Dazai replied.

Chuuya rolled his eyes. "Lead the way, then."

He waited, ears focused on the soft sound of Dazai's shoes hitting the pavement; but Dazai shifted once he reached Chuuya's level instead of walking ahead, and though Chuuya was on the ready for a sneak attack he wasn't for the feeling of Dazai _pulling his hair_.

He let out a cry of pain. "What the _fuck_ —" Dazai laughed, pulling again, forcing Chuuya to bend backward and walk back toward the shade. "I'm going to fucking _kill_ you—ow, motherfucking—"

Dazai avoided both the elbow he threw back and the blind grab that followed. His hold on Chuuya's hair didn't relent. He was doing something—tying it.

He was tying Chuuya's hair. Chuuya's hands stilled as they were, and before he even knew, his breath suspended itself.

He felt Dazai tug the elastic band up until it reached just above his nape. This time, when the hot city wind hit him from the side, his neck didn't feel so damp. And the heat at his back from Dazai's own body was an entirely different kind of bother.

"There," Dazai said, close enough that Chuuya felt the word brush against his ear and temple. "You'll be more comfortable like this. I told you, I came prepared."

Chuuya's chest was heavy with more than just the weather. He had to work to swallow, and again when Dazai finally let go of his hair and brushed his fingers against the line of his shoulder as they came down. Finally, he took a step forward; Dazai let him go easily. He only turned around once he was outside of reaching distance and once he could smooth his own face into neutrality.

"Do that again," Chuuya said, voice alight with—with anger, with pain. With age-old want. "And it'll be the last thing you do."

Dazai smiled. "Take off your gloves," he replied.

" _No_."

"We're in one of the hottest places in the country. No one cares that your hands are ugly, Chuuya, just take off the gloves."

Chuuya's hands were already slick with sweat. He could feel it every time he moved, could hear the leather squelch disgustingly when he closed his fists.

He closed his fists anyway. "Take off the wrappings, then," he challenged.

Dazai looked into his eyes differently than usual. Chuuya didn't have time to understand what it reminded him off before he said, "All right."

And he ripped open one turn of gauze at the crook of his wrist, tugging nonchalantly on it until all of his arm was bare— _all_ of it, every burned and beaten and scarred inch of skin. He did the same with the other one under Chuuya's dumbstruck staring, and then took his hands to his neck to take off the wrapping there and expose the jagged white scar running along the underside of his chin. Right where he had let his opponent cut him open with the knife now in Chuuya's possession, almost six years ago.

Dazai's hands weren't shaking when he threw the gauze into the nearest trash bin, but they weren't very steady either.

"Dazai," Chuuya said, hesitant.

"Your turn," Dazai replied darkly.

Chuuya bit his lip. It took longer for him to take off his gloves than it had for Dazai to tug off the bandages, because they were sticking so hard to his skin; he had to work through the now-faint pain of Corruption that always took weeks to heal up, each fingers stinging with it as he slipped it out.

The bruises were greenish now. Still covering every bit of visible skin almost all the way to his elbows, even if his forearms were hidden under the sleeves of the shirt Dazai had bought.

Chuuya shoved the gloves into his pockets and turned his back to Dazai, shoulders hunched. "Shit," he let out. "Happy now, shithead?"

Dazai chuckled. "With you? Never."

But he walked ahead this time, without making a suspicious move. The grotesque flesh of his arm brushed Chuuya's as he did; and Chuuya saw the way that the people around them looked at Dazai's scars and Chuuya's own skin, with strangers' pity and disgust in their eyes; the step he took after Dazai dug into the road and left an imprint behind, surrounded by lightning-like cracks.

"Well now," he heard Dazai murmur. "We've got a shifty little bastard to make talk."


	3. Part III

Warnings: child abuse, emotional manipulation, grief/mourning, vomiting.

If you wish to read the explicit version of this story, please go to my AO3 or my Tumblr, as FFN doesn't allow a higher rating than Mature.

* * *

 **Owe No Debt  
** **Part III**

Dazai stopped on the way to Sakaguchi's hideout to buy watermelon, just because he could, or maybe just in order to annoy Chuuya.

Chuuya didn't grace him with an answer when he offered him a slice. He spared a glance to the charred skin at the crook of Dazai's right wrist instead— _sixteen years old and Chuuya doesn't feel a thing, chest light, head empty, body bursting with an energy he will never be able to contain and heart free of guilt, at last, at last_.

Dazai had to crawl through flames to get to him in time.

Chuuya scowled, and looked at the street ahead once more. "Shut the fuck up," he said, though Dazai hadn't said a thing.

The sweat wouldn't dry off of his hands despite not wearing the gloves anymore. He was fresh out of the shower, skin clean and hair still a little damp from it, still smelling of lavender; but already the sun beating on them and the wind rushing over them had slicked his face with sweat and refused to let him breathe without feeling _heavy_.

It didn't matter how light he made himself—and he didn't make himself too light, because it would only take Dazai half a second to realize and touch him, just to be contradictory—Kumagaya felt like hell on earth. Sweltering and damp like a festered wound.

Chuuya was glad he wasn't wearing a suit. He wished he could do without wearing anything at all.

Dazai touched his shoulder—over cloth, not skin—and said, "We're here."

Chuuya looked forward. Looked up.

"A _hotel_?" he sneered.

"What were you expecting?" Dazai replied with laughter on his voice.

"I don't know. An underground bunker, for starters."

"Q isn't _that_ hard to handle."

Chuuya huffed. "Easy to say for someone he can never use his powers on," he said dryly.

"Oh, Chuuya," and Chuuya didn't acknowledge the rush of blood to his face at the affection with which Dazai said his name, "there are far easier methods to control Q than simple brutal force."

Dazai's hand left his shoulder. Their arms brushed together when he walked past Chuuya and into the entrance of the tall building, and Chuuya felt for a second the most ridiculous urge to press into his body and touch their skins together. Wrist to wrist. Bruises to scars.

He breathed the thought back in harshly.

The place Sakaguchi had elected to hide in was much nicer than the one Chuuya and Dazai were staying at. The lobby was wide and luminous, adorned with a crystal chandelier—though Chuuya thought some parts of it might be made of glass instead—and the elevator had impeccable transparent walls for looking out and under. They walked toward it in silence and pressed the button to call it. When it arrived, a pale-faced woman walked out, resolutely looking in front of her and pressing a silk handkerchief to her mouth. Chuuya couldn't help the snort of pity he always felt at the thought of those who feared heights.

"Easy for someone who can never fall," Dazai murmured by his side.

Chuuya didn't answer. He stepped into the elevator, felt the phantom hand of a fourteen-year-old boy holding his weight by the wrist above Yokohama's skyline, and thought, _I've already fallen_.

Sakaguchi was located at the topmost floor. Dazai pressed the _Twelfth_ button nonchalantly and proceeded to make laughable noises of appreciation as he looked outside, as if he hadn't spent years in a building far taller and more impressive than some countryside hotel.

Maybe Dazai had already forgotten.

The corridor they walked into was made of dark brown wood for the floor and off-white walls lit by orange lights. No corny decorations or fake paintings in flaking frames. Tasteful.

"Come on," Dazai murmured, and there was no more humor in his tone, no more light in his eyes.

Chuuya looked at his shoulder with a frown as he followed.

Their door was at the very end of the hallway. They stayed silent, their feet light out of habit rather than need—Chuuya thought every other room on the floor must be empty, no one as smart as Sakaguchi would let civilians get caught in the crossfire—and he touched his hip for a second. Brushed past the handle of his knife to touch that of the gun carefully holstered under his arm and shirt.

He disliked guns, but he would use it if need be. Dazai threw him a joyless smile as he knocked.

"Softie," Chuuya couldn't help but whisper.

"No need to be hostile first thing," Dazai replied in kind.

"We're not going to get _Sakaguchi_ with just small talk—"

He stopped, because the door had opened. Chuuya looked at Dazai despite how much of a mistake he knew it was— _watch ahead, watch back, keep your eyes on the enemy_ —and saw the way Dazai's face spasmed in something too reminiscent of when he was eighteen. They looked away together.

Sakaguchi Ango had always been prone to sweating. Chuuya remembered the constant shine of his pale skin under stress and how clipped his words were, how awkward and pathetic he had seemed to him for someone who bore so many of the mafia's secrets. Someone who was bound to have been trained to withstand torture and more.

He was sweaty now. He was red and tired, back slouched, and he had lines on his angular face that hadn't been there the last time Chuuya had seen him. Sakaguchi looked between the two of them with something very close to genuine disbelief.

"Ah," he let out. Too nervous to be laughter. "You two, really?"

Dazai took hold of the door's handle as he stepped forward. Sakaguchi didn't step back, though his face tensed on something too complicated for Chuuya to understand. "Are you going to let us in, Ango?" Dazai asked quietly.

Sakaguchi looked into the room behind himself. "I don't suppose you'll let it slide if I refuse," he said, and he sounded _weak_.

"You suppose right, traitor," Chuuya replied, irritated.

He walked forward, past Dazai and past Sakaguchi himself, hand wrapped around his knife. The room looked empty enough that he felt uneasy, so he busied himself with kicking open the bathroom door and checking under the bed and into the closet for a trace of someone else.

Hopefully that'd buy enough time for Sakaguchi to wipe the infuriating _grief_ off his face.

"Clear," he called without turning back.

"Excellent job as always, Chuuya," Dazai replied. He still had that dragging quality to his voice that Chuuya hadn't heard once in the times they had been reunited.

It made him want to grind his teeth, and he didn't know _why_.

Sakaguchi closed the door behind them with a shaking hand and tugged on the collar of his cheap suit. "I… have to say I wasn't expecting that," he said.

"Your security is suspiciously low," Dazai murmured.

Chuuya could almost feel the hatred on his skin. It made shivers run up his bare arms despite the suffocating heat.

Sakaguchi pushed his glasses up his shiny nose. "I expected to be followed, but not by Double Black."

There was no helping the surge of old pride that Chuuya felt upon hearing the name. It had never failed to make his chest flush with satisfaction, with the certainty of belonging somewhere, and even now as an adult, some warmth gathered in him. He looked at Dazai despite himself, and found Dazai looking at Sakaguchi.

"We're not working together," Dazai said coldly. "You just make a convenient common enemy. Hand us the kid."

Sakaguchi laughed, all nerves. "You know I can't do that."

"You can if you want to live," Chuuya added, eyes fixed on Dazai, and he didn't know why his jaw hurt when Dazai didn't react to his words at all.

"Chuuya-kun—"

"Nakahara is good enough for you, mole."

Sakaguchi hesitated. "Nakahara-kun," he settled on. His gaze was direct when he looked at Chuuya, despite his weak body language. "I think you can sympathize with the need to get Q very, very far away from either the agency or the mafia."

The wide hall full of coffins flashed through Chuuya's mind and gripped him tight in the chest, but rage was at the forefront instead of grief when he spoke again. " _Fuck_ you," he spat, stepping into the skinny man's space and making the floorboards crack under the weight of his power. "Don't fucking pretend to care about any of us dying, you disgusting—"

Dazai grabbed him by the shoulder firmly, fingers threatening to dig into the opening of his collar and touch his skin. Chuuya didn't dare shrug him off—he couldn't afford to be disarmed now.

"You assume the agency will use Q," Dazai said to Sakaguchi. His hand left Chuuya, and the shirt that he had bought for him clung to his skin from the heat and inevitable sweat, like an imprint of his touch. "This would be false."

"Would it?" Sakaguchi replied in a breath. He wasn't looking at Chuuya anymore; now all of his attention was on Dazai, and there was no mistaking the ache in his eyes nor his pathetic efforts at keeping professional and composed.

Chuuya could've laughed, if he weren't acutely familiar with the feeling.

"You're the only person who can control him, Dazai-kun. It's not so far-fetched to imagine that the agency—"

"It is far-fetched to imagine that our director would dare use a child to do his bidding," Dazai cut icily. Then he smiled, with none of the warmth that Chuuya had seen on him on a rooftop years ago and had expected out of their last few encounters. "Ango, really. Some of us left for greener pastures. We can't all just live off of faking love and loyalty."

Sakaguchi flinched as if he had been struck.

Chuuya decided that he'd had enough of whatever Dazai was playing at.

"Enough chitchat," he growled. "You two can argue over who's the worst traitor later. Give us the kid or die, Sakaguchi."

He grounded himself in the second that followed, as Sakaguchi's eyes flew toward the window and then to Chuuya himself—and though Dazai had to catch the man's fist with his arm and step away, Chuuya hardly had to move to sidestep the kick he threw his way.

Sakaguchi jumped back into the room, breathing hard, sweating heavily.

Chuuya smiled at him, and knew that it looked like anything but friendliness or joy. "Come on," he drawled. "You don't seriously think you can win against us."

Sakaguchi tensed. Then his shoulders slumped, and he breathed out, and straightened his back at last.

Chuuya felt a flicker of apprehension, deep in his gut. "You'll be overwhelmed in seconds," he tried again. Dazai came to stand by him, but Chuuya found that he didn't want to risk looking away from Sakaguchi at all. "You used to collect information on both of us, remember? You know what we can do better than most."

"I remember," Sakaguchi said lowly. "I also know it's too much to ask for the years to have broken up your teamwork."

"Right." There was still something cold in Chuuya's belly—he grabbed Dazai by the belt to keep him from walking in Sakaguchi's direction.

Dazai looked down at him, and his eyes were empty.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

It was as though they were eighteen again, but not in a way that brought Chuuya comfort or amusement.

"Look in front of you, bastard," he replied. "Something's not right."

Dazai did, with ghost-like movements, as if he were carrying the weight of someone else on him.

Sakaguchi's face hadn't lost its usual expression of disbelief and fatigue. For all that Chuuya knew, the man was born wearing it. But his breathing had calmed to the point of being worrying, and he was looking at Chuuya intently. Directly.

With a start, Chuuya noticed that the man's ridiculously wide glasses were gone.

Sakaguchi's mouth parted on a smile, and he said, "You're much smarter than they give you credit for, Chuuya-kun."

Chuuya tried to speak back but found that he couldn't; his throat knotted up with—fear, he realized starkly, fear so tight that it felt as physical as a rope around his neck, fear the likes of which he hadn't felt since he was small enough to be picked up in the arms of his mother—

"Chuuya?"

Dazai's voice came to him as if he were submerged in water. Chuuya heard the sound of something falling and realized too late that it was himself. That the ache in his knees came from them hitting wood, but the ache in his _ribs_ and _face_ came from something else altogether, something Chuuya remembered as if he had felt it yesterday.

Kicks and punches. Chuuya coughed, and felt phantom blood trickle down his chin.

His arms raised in front of him in defense without his controlling them; he thought he could see fresh bruises pile on top of Corruption's last shine—and those were in the shape of hands too wide to belong to anything but the fabric of his memories.

He felt something touch him, fingers pressing into every piece of skin they could find, and a voice say _Fuck_ next to his ear, and then, _You're a mind-controller too_.

Chuuya opened his eyes, in spite of the terror shaking him.

Dazai was looking down on him, but Chuuya couldn't meet his eyes. Not with the black shadow standing behind Dazai that was the shape of his father, and moved the way his father had moved before Chuuya killed him.

He forced himself to look at Sakaguchi's pale, stricken face, made himself open his mouth and speak. "What the fuck are you doing to me?" His voice was only a whisper, and he tasted blood with every word.

The shadow of his father had followed his gaze to stand beside Sakaguchi, like a great domesticated monster.

"I'm sorry," Sakaguchi said—had the gall to sound sincere for—"I, I don't use my ability often."

"Chuuya—"

Chuuya pushed Dazai away and vomited onto the shiny floor.

Nothing came out. He knew that. There was no bile running from his lips and no blood up his nose from the hits, not really, but it was what he had done that day when he was eleven. Vomited bile on the floor, snorted blood out of his nose, and taken his father by the wrist to kill him.

"I can't believe no one ever found out what you could do," he said, heaving. " _Fuck_."

"Chuuya, what—" Dazai still sounded distant. Chuuya didn't have the ability to parse the urgency on his voice or what it meant.

"I'm trapped in a memory," he muttered. "My worst, I'm guessing."

Sakaguchi smiled weakly. "Your most traumatic," he said, almost an apology. "I'm… I never wanted to use Discourse on Decadence on you, Chuuya-kun. Not on anyone, but especially not on you. You're a good person."

Chuuya almost laughed.

He felt Dazai touch his arm again, uselessly. Obviously the ability would only be disabled once he touched the caster. Chuuya wanted to tell him so, but he felt another bruise bloom around his neck, and he whimpered instead.

The sound seemed to shock Dazai into action. He jumped to his feet and forward, and Sakaguchi evaded him with surprising ease, though his breathing was harsh again.

"It's no use, Dazai-kun," he said. "I can escape you for a long time—I can keep Chuuya-kun trapped like this for as long as I can evade your touch."

Dazai didn't say anything. Chuuya watched him move through the large room with barely any of the grace he usually demonstrated and understood despite the ghost hands choking his neck that Dazai was panicking.

 _Idiot_ , he thought, something desperate and fond opening inside him like an old wound.

"I'm fine," he forced out. Sakaguchi tensed in surprise but didn't turn away to look at him. "Dazai. Don't fucking let him go."

"I won't," he heard Dazai say.

Heard, not saw, because his father was standing in front of him.

Chuuya wasn't the most intellectual person around. He had few memories of attending school and fewer of excelling at it. He was _clever_ , he knew how to get out of tough situations, he was self-sufficient and level-headed and he could lead. But he couldn't engage in the mind games that Mori so enjoyed, that Dazai lost his soul to until he could only find solace on the edge of a razorblade; he had no passion for science and no knowledge of abilities outside of how to control his own. When it wasn't controlling him.

Even so, he had to get out of Sakaguchi's grasp. So Chuuya closed his eyes and stilled despite his father's approaching steps. He exhaled all the air in his lungs and dug inside himself for the ragged edge of his faith, the severed rope of his trust in Dazai, the way he had in that forest when he let Corruption take hold.

Sakaguchi's ability hadn't thrown him back in time. It didn't even look like his nightmares did. If Chuuya had to hazard a guess, he would say that it was meant to _distract_ rather than torture as he had first assumed; it made him feel the way he had felt on the day the memory took place (physically, with the ache in his broken ribs; mentally, with the fear coursing through his veins and crystallizing around his heart) and superposed it to the present visually in a way that overwhelmed whoever was in its grasp.

 _The most traumatic_ , Sakaguchi had said. So he couldn't count on it to work on everyone. Chuuya choked back the memory of a sob as he felt a fist land against his cheekbone and kept himself still, ears straining for the sound of Dazai and Sakaguchi running circles around each other.

Sakaguchi couldn't know that anyone he used his ability on had anything traumatic enough in their life to keep them under like this. Oh, he could guess—maybe he even knew that Chuuya did, maybe Dazai had talked all those years ago—though Chuuya had hoped, at least, for Dazai's silence on this. He had known of Dazai's earth-shattering hatred of his own mentor and thought, _he understands_.

Chuuya's chest constricted on a sob or a laugh. He had never really understood Dazai. He had never wanted to. He had gripped onto the line between them with both hands and pretended for years that he didn't care, until Dazai left and he stuffed the hole in his belly full of everything distracting he had on hand.

He opened his eyes.

Dazai and Sakaguchi were both panting. Chuuya watched from the floor and around his father's legs and knew without a doubt that Sakaguchi could keep going far longer than Dazai could; his stance hadn't diminished in the least, speaking of the kind of training that Chuuya himself found adequate.

"This is ridiculous," Sakaguchi said, desperate, still trying to appear kind. "Dazai-kun—"

"Don't you dare speak my name as if you care," Dazai snapped back in a wheeze. His scarred hand was holding his side tightly, and only then did Chuuya notice the blood stains on his shirt, as if…

As if he was still hurt from the forest.

"I do care," Sakaguchi replied. His voice was so heavy with emotion that it was a surprise he wasn't choking on it, but his eyes were dry. "Dazai-kun. I've always cared about you."

Dazai made a noise, like a wounded animal. Chuuya had never heard anything like this come out of him.

"I c-—fuck." Sakaguchi rubbed a shaking hand over his sweat-drenched face. "I, I cared about the both of you."

The silence felt as slick as blood over Chuuya's hands. He knew without asking that neither of them was talking about him, and in the unmourned death clinging to Sakaguchi's skin—the grieving hollowness of Dazai's stare—he thought he could find enough room to remember the kind man who had brought Dazai to his home and looked at them both with care. Gentle, undemanding.

He thought, with a flash of understanding, that Sakaguchi could never be cruel enough not to leave an escape way somewhere in his powers, if he had loved a man like that.

Chuuya looked back at the shadow whose blows he had stopped feeling through the shock stilling him. The movements were wrong now, not following the patterns. His father should have disappeared after choking him, because that was when Chuuya had killed him. Now the memory looked fresh. As if it was stuck in a loop.

So Chuuya reached up and closed his fingers around the thin shadow of his father's wrist, the way he had at eleven with much smaller hands.

The spell broke.

It took effort not to sob from sheer relief as the terror left him and simple, blissful summer heat settled onto his body. Chuuya stayed still on the floor and tried to find his footing.

He needed to find a way to tell Dazai he was free of Sakaguchi's hold without Sakaguchi realizing.

Thankfully, it seemed luck was on his side. Dazai made a move sideways and Sakaguchi stepped away accordingly, putting him with his back to Chuuya and Dazai facing him; as he hoped, Dazai slid a glance to Chuuya on the floor, and Chuuya nodded silently, thanking every god he knew of for Dazai's complete mastery of his facial muscles.

Dazai looked just as unhinged and angry when he looked back to Sakaguchi. Their exchange hadn't even lasted a second.

"I don't want to hurt you," Sakaguchi was saying. Chuuya rose to a crouching position behind him, without making a sound, and held his breath when he saw Sakaguchi reach inside his suit jacket and pull out a small gun. The man pointed it at Dazai with a steady hand. " _Please_."

"You keep saying that," Dazai answered darkly. "Yet Odasaku is dead and Chuuya looks like a corpse."

"I—"

"I'm just wondering, Ango." Dazai's voice was the cruelest Chuuya had ever heard it. "Does it happen accidentally? Or you do you have a special place in your tight schedule dedicated to destroying everything I care about?"

Sakaguchi's shoulders shook, and the safety of the gun clicked.

Chuuya jumped the last of the distance separating him from Sakaguchi and let gravity weigh over the man as soon as his fingers brushed the back of his jacket; Sakaguchi fell with a cry, finger tightening over the trigger reflexively.

Energy rushed through Chuuya's hands, went through Sakaguchi's body and the gun he held—inside the chamber and between trigger mechanism and bullet, between _spark_ and bullet, snuffing the motion out of gravity in a fraction of a second.

He could hardly breathe in the silence that followed. Dazai was frozen in place in front of him, his face a mask of surprise, hatred and worry. In the end, Chuuya rose to his feet again despite the shaking in his legs. He ripped the gun out of Sakaguchi's hand, walked to the window, and threw it upwards, charged with enough of the Tainted Sorrow to make sure that it would reach _space_ before starting to fall down.

Then, he exhaled.

"Chuuya," Dazai said behind him.

"Not now," he replied tightly.

For once, Dazai didn't dispute him the right to silence.

Sakaguchi was stuck to the floor. Chuuya realized that he had probably overdone it once he saw how still the man's torso was, and relieved some of weight on him so he at least could breathe. Sakaguchi gulped in mouthfuls of air and coughed them out unattractively. His hair was in disarray. It had fallen out of the pin he kept it in and was sticking to his damp, red forehead. The wet around his eyes wasn't from sweat, though.

Dazai was standing over the man. His eyes were fixed on Chuuya but Chuuya had no doubt that he was achingly conscious of Sakaguchi's fallen body at his feet; his face was pale, his eyes dark on the kind of all-encompassing hatred that Chuuya had not witnessed since they were children.

He stepped toward them. "You've lost," he told Sakaguchi, and ignored the way his own voice shook, raspy, as if he really had been strangled. "You can't fight, you can't use your shitty ability on Dazai or me. It's over. Tell us where Q is."

Sakaguchi looked at Dazai, face tight on misery. "Dazai-kun…" He choked, then, because Dazai had stepped on his chest and leaned all of his weight forward.

"Don't be difficult now, Ango," Dazai said. His foot twisted sideways, and Sakaguchi moaned.

They wouldn't get him with torture, Chuuya thought. Sakaguchi knew how to handle pain too well—he could already tell that Sakaguchi was bracing himself for it, voicing his hurt to keep his mind clear, readying himself for the certainty of death with nothing but sheer habit.

And seeing Dazai torture someone felt wrong. This grown-up, warmer version of Dazai, who wept for a friend's death, who called the monster of their childhood ' _kid_ '… Chuuya wanted nothing less than to see him dye his hands with a former friend's blood.

So he stepped forward and wrapped his sweat-damp hand around Dazai's wrist, skin-to-skin. "Let him go."

Dazai tensed almost imperceptibly. "My," he drawled, looking at Chuuya again. "Now who's getting soft?"

"You don't fucking know how to do this anymore," Chuuya snapped back. "Let me handle it." He squeezed, tightly, feeling the bumps and ridges of Dazai's scarred skin against his palm.

Dazai's foot left Sakaguchi's chest.

He walked out of the room, shaking Chuuya's hold off and slamming the door shut behind himself. Chuuya paid no mind to the ache behind his ribs—the remnants of panic and something else, something he had no name for—and looked down at Sakaguchi's prowled form.

"Thank you," Sakaguchi rasped at him. His eyes were wet again.

"I didn't do it for you," Chuuya replied.

Sakaguchi smiled. "I know. That's why I'm thanking you."

 _Thank you for taking care of him._

Oda had looked at Chuuya like this, once. Not with pity, but with gratitude.

* * *

They found Q, terrified out of his mind, in one of the neighboring rooms.

Chuuya didn't wait for Dazai to do whatever it was that he planned to do to subdue the boy. This room's window gave to a narrow, empty street, so he jumped out and let himself float down until his feet touched ground. He started walking the way they had come, felt the city's hot wind on his sweaty skin, kept his mind clear off the vividness of feeling someone hurt him with no way for him to fight back.

It took a lot less time for him to reach their hotel than it had taken for them to find Sakaguchi's. Chuuya had left Sakaguchi unconscious and mostly unharmed in his room, strapped securely enough to the desk chair that no one would find him before room service the following day; and even if Sakaguchi had a way of freeing himself or contacting someone before that, Chuuya was pretty sure that Double Black was still enough of a threat to keep people at bay. Q was valuable, but not valuable enough to lose lives over.

Chuuya felt no relief upon feeling the AC on him when he entered the lobby this time. He climbed the stairs up to his room, slid the card key into the slot in his door, and opened it, feet already half out of his shoes.

Dazai was waiting for him inside, sitting on the bed.

For a moment Chuuya stilled, eyes drawn to Dazai's but unable to speak. Dazai's face had regained some color and warmth—he wished he didn't notice, but he did. He always did.

Finally, Dazai smiled. "It's like you forget taxis exist," he said lightly.

Some modicum of energy sparked in Chuuya at the sound of his voice, and he threw his shoe at Dazai's face in irritation. "Don't break into my room."

"They make it so _easy_. It's practically asking me to, Chuuya." Dazai had grabbed the shoe with both hands and let it fall to the floor with distaste on his face.

"I'll be sure to thoroughly trap the door once you get out," Chuuya replied.

"I always appreciate you caring for my entertainment."

There was a slight edge to Dazai's words right then, but all of Chuuya's body and mind screamed _no_ at the mere thought of engaging it. "Whatever," he muttered. He rubbed his hand over his face despite how weak this habit made him look. His fingers slid to the side of his neck, touched the tie still holding his hair up.

Dazai hopped off the bed. "Q's secure in my room," he declared. "You can sleep, if you want to."

Chuuya tensed, and his hand fell down his side. "No."

"I won't leave," Dazai added. "Kunikida's going to join me tomorrow afternoon, I can't leave before then."

 _How do I know you're not lying to me?_ Chuuya almost said.

As if reading his mind, Dazai handed over his phone, open on the text in question. Chuuya didn't ask for permission before scrolling through the rest of Dazai's messages; another one from Fukuzawa, telling the same story, convinced him.

"If you're gone when I wake up I will find you and kill you," Chuuya said, throwing back the phone. It landed in Dazai's hand harmlessly. "Q's going back to headquarters with me."

"We can discuss this once you've slept," Dazai replied evenly.

Chuuya didn't have the strength for suspicion anymore. He walked toward the bed, shed the silk shirt off his back, took off the gun and holster so that he was only in his undershirt; he didn't hear Dazai move as he stripped off his pants as well and didn't find it in himself to care. The bed felt like heaven when he let himself fall on it face-first. He kicked the bedspread and blanket off with his feet, dug a hand under the pillow until he felt the shape of it under his cheek, and closed his eyes.

A weight settled on the bed next to his hips, making his body lean an inch to the side. "What now," he muttered.

Dazai didn't answer. Chuuya heard the noise that the sheets made as he leaned sideways, though, and when Dazai's fingers touched the back of his head, all of his body tensed.

Without a word, Dazai tugged on the tie. It hurt for a moment but his fingers were gentle, easing Chuuya's hair out of it and spreading it over his neck as if painting a picture; Chuuya's scalp tingled from being released of tension, and Chuuya couldn't tell if the knot in his throat was from fatigue anymore. All he knew was the familiar burn in his exhausted eyes.

Dazai's fingers never directly touched his skin, but he might as well have pushed the flat of his palm directly through Chuuya's spine.

* * *

Chuuya awoke to pitch blackness. The sluggish, heavy, dry feeling that ran through his body was enough to tell him that he hadn't been out of it for more than a few hours. It had been sunset by the time he and Dazai made it back to the hotel, and now the digital clock on his bedside table read _2:34_ , blinking a gentle green.

He was still laying on his front, shivering because the AC had been turned on while he slept. Chuuya pushed himself into a kneeling position with both hands and slid out of the bed entirely.

He found rice crackers in the cupboard above the sink of the kitchenette and ate the entire bag, before downing the full bottle of iced tea stored in the tiny fridge under. Then he made his way to the bathroom, threw his undershirt and boxers into a corner, and let water burn over him. He made it as hot as he could stand, washed his teeth and cleaned his face while it ran over him and turned his skin red. He didn't decrease the temperature until he started having trouble breathing.

The cool felt heavenly after that.

There was a note on the bedside table. Chuuya only noticed it once he finally turned on the ceiling lights as he came out of the bathroom. _37B_ , it read.

He crumpled it in his fist.

Chuuya didn't need to dig through his own luggage. He upended the content of the bag that Dazai had bought him on the bed and made his pick out of the light shirts and slacks there, all soft, fine material beneath his bruised fingers. He settled on a bottle green shirt and black slacks, shoved his damp hair to the side of his neck, and as he tied his choker in place he told himself he wasn't trying to impress anyone.

The third floor of the hotel looked much the same as the one Chuuya was staying on. He made his way to the door labeled 37B without faltering and knocked once on the resin panel.

Dazai opened almost immediately.

He had changed his clothes as well. The bandages were still gone, but the sleeves of his black shirt ran down his arms and wrists now; Dazai gave Chuuya a brief once-over that Chuuya felt like a full-body shiver and stepped aside to let him in.

"Didn't even have the decency to choke on your pillow," he murmured.

Chuuya couldn't help the fleeting smile on his lips.

Q wasn't sleeping—the boy was sitting under the window with no restraint on him but for Dazai's gift and, no doubt, Dazai's words. His nightmarish eyes found Chuuya's as soon as he walked in, but he made no comment. He didn't smile, didn't threaten, didn't play the part of the crazy child-demon that Chuuya remembered so well from his own childhood.

He looked like a child. He didn't even have his horrific doll with him. Chuuya didn't think he had ever seen Q without his ability running.

Heart beating fast, Chuuya turned to Dazai. "What the fuck is this?"

"This," Dazai said, "is why Q should come back with the agency." His smile was strained, but it was real.

Behind Chuuya, Q whimpered.

"You think you can, what, fix him?"

"I think an environment where he isn't being used and abused can't be worse than one where he is," Dazai replied. "Q didn't attack a single member of the agency while he was with us."

Chuuya threw another look at the boy. He couldn't parse this—couldn't reconcile the dangerous murder machine that had caused enough casualties within the mafia that Mori and Dazai had to lock him up at the age of seven, just so they'd be safe, with the twelve-year-old cringing under the moonlight in front of him.

"I have orders," Chuuya said. "Either bring the boy back or kill him."

"I've no doubt that you do."

Dazai's voice was kind. Overwhelmingly, _wrongly_ so. "Dazai," Chuuya said between his teeth, "you can't fix this. He's crazy. He'll kill you all eventually."

"I didn't know you cared about my colleagues," Dazai retorted.

"I rather like this Kunikida guy, actually."

There was silence, and then Dazai laughed, helpless and uncomposed. Chuuya felt warm at the sound despite everything else, warm enough to turn his back to Dazai so Dazai wouldn't see his face.

He looked at Q again; though the boy hadn't moved from his spot, his eyes were fixed on Chuuya. His ability had deformed his appearance, and abuse had torn scars into his body too reminiscent of Dazai's for comfort, but there was something infinitely childish in the way he pleaded without words, eyes wet with fear and resignation. As if he wanted to say, _Please_ , but knew that the effort of putting this much hope into a word was futile, because no one ever listened.

A familiar helplessness. The familiar, aching feeling of having been a child who said _Please_ and was ignored.

"You'll have to make it look like you pried him out of my hands with a fight," he told Dazai. His mouth felt dry as the desert. He heard Dazai shift on his feet behind him, start saying his name, but Chuuya raised a hand to stop him. "Don't get the wrong idea. It pisses me off to let you have him, but I'd rather he was anywhere but where he can hurt my men."

"Mori will know," Dazai said quietly.

"Mori probably expected it. If he really wanted someone to beat you he'd have come himself instead of sending me."

The thought hurt, no matter how true it was.

Dazai's hand grabbed his shoulder and turned him around until their eyes could meet. "You're an idiot," he said, and the fondness on his voice tightened in Chuuya's throat, tugged at the torn end of something he had been unburying for weeks now. "And Mori's an idiot too if he thinks he stands a better chance of killing me than you do."

"What the fuck are you—"

"I'd defend myself against Mori," Dazai cut in. His smile was bashful; his voice terribly sincere. "I don't know if I'd defend myself against you, Chuuya."

Chuuya knew he was staring—he knew Dazai could probably read more in his eyes than he even was capable of feeling—but it didn't matter how much he looked, how much he sought the tells of a lie on Dazai's face or voice. His mouth opened, and closed, and Dazai's eyes drifted down to look at his lips in an achingly human and recognizable way.

He pushed a hand against Dazai's chest when he made to lean forward, stopping him, throwing an angry look at the child still huddled under the windowsill. "Fuck," he let out, before storming out of the room altogether.

For a second he entertained the thought of breaking the window at the end of the hallway and throwing himself out, floating far enough up that Dazai wouldn't be able to see him anymore. He hadn't brought anything important with him. He could afford to leave everything behind.

"Chuuya," Dazai called in a breath, and Chuuya froze in place for the longest, tensest second of his life.

"Downstairs," he managed to reply.

For the second time that day, Dazai allowed him silence. "Just give me a second," he replied, face flushed, before kneeling by the door and fiddling with something. A different lock than the automatic one slid in place, sealing the room inside and out and the monster boy in it.

Chuuya didn't wait more. He pushed open the staircase's door with a little too much strength: the door folded almost like paper at the center, the joints creaked heavily, and Chuuya climbed down the stairs too fast and too heavy. Dazai shadowed him every step of the way.

He unlocked his door once he reached it and threw the card at the desk alongside his unopened luggage. Dazai closed the door carefully behind them.

And then Chuuya shoved him against it, not hard enough to hurt, only enough for Dazai to let out a rushed breath from the deepest of his strained lungs.

Chuuya kept his hand on him so he wouldn't move—wouldn't cross the arm's length separating them. "What the fuck was that?" he growled.

Dazai didn't look fazed at all. "Is that how you want to play it?" was all he replied. "Fine. We can argue if you want."

"I don't want—" Chuuya stopped himself, because he didn't know what he wanted.

He didn't know what to say.

His hand pressed harder into Dazai's chest, but then Dazai hissed quietly, and Chuuya remembered the blood from earlier. His grip eased despite himself.

"Stop playing with me," he said.

"I'm not," Dazai replied. "I wasn't lying."

Chuuya's heartbeat was in his throat, almost painful in its strength. "Then you're fucking stupid." His voice was shaking. "You're practically inviting me to kill you."

"A dream come true, isn't it?"

Dazai's face was longing, and soft, both of his eyes peering into Chuuya's with no self-satisfied glint. There was no way Chuuya could avoid the memory of the fourteen-year-old boy whose ego he had punched down a notch on the rooftop of the mafia's headquarters, and who had looked at him and smiled at him the very same way.

There was no way he could avoid noticing that Dazai's hair was shorter now than it had been then, his face thinner with adulthood, his body warm under the loose press of Chuuya's knuckles. Solid as a rock. So much more attractive than any memory.

Chuuya had never wanted to kill Dazai less.

Dazai's hand came up and touched his wrist, as gently as it had on the day they had met again after years. Chuuya had been working a frustration he hadn't even known he felt out of his body then; and frustration was present in every line of him now, different, heated, dripping over the edge of far too small a corner of his mind.

"Chuuya," Dazai said, his fingers circling Chuuya's green-bruised wrist. "You're not going to hurt me."

"Someone's fucking confident," Chuuya replied between his teeth.

Dazai's smile was understanding as he answered, "You'd never raise a hand on someone you care about."

The air froze in Chuuya's lungs.

Dazai's hand moved forward, leaving his wrist to touch the inside of his forearm and then the crook of his elbow, where Chuuya had pulled up the sleeves of the green shirt. His fingers dug into the fabric and drew Chuuya forward with it.

"I've hit you hundreds of times," he murmured, letting himself follow the motion. His feet were touching Dazai's when he stilled, and he had to lean back his head to keep looking at him.

"When we fought," Dazai agreed. "But I'm not fighting now."

He wasn't touching with the intent to strike when his fingers found the back of Chuuya's neck, wasn't showing his teeth when he smiled and leaned down and his lips hovered just under Chuuya's nose, just above Chuuya's mouth, in askance. "Please tell me I can do this," he said, voice tight, and Chuuya laughed, directly against his lips.

He let go of Dazai's chest to grab his collar instead and tug, raised his other hand to slid into Dazai's soft hair and press their mouths together, felt his lips swell from the contact alone and electricity thrum through his vein instead of oxygen. He leaned into Dazai's body and ignored the huff of delight that Dazai let out at this; when Dazai opened his lips Chuuya followed instantly, tilted his head sideways, let Dazai tongue his bottom lip almost shyly.

His face was burning. He closed his mouth on Dazai's lip, felt Dazai trail wetly to the side of his mouth in surprise.

"Chuuya?"

"Shut up," Chuuya replied.

He felt Dazai swallow. "If you don't want—"

He stepped on Dazai's foot, just because he could, and Dazai closed his mouth with a grunt. "Just give me a moment, damn it."

Chuuya rested his weight on his heels once more—felt another rush of blood to his head as he realized that he'd been _tiptoeing_ into the kiss—and pressed his face onto Dazai's shoulder. His hand was still touching Dazai's hair, the other pressed against his own cheek, fingers hooked into Dazai's collar.

Of course, it was too much to ask of Dazai not to seize the occasion.

Chuuya felt Dazai's laugh on the top of his head before he even spoke. "Was it _too much_?" The asshole had the gall to sound amused, bright— _fond_.

Chuuya's face was so hot he thought it might start smoking soon. "If you say another word I'm going to rip your tongue out and pin it to that board over the desk."

"Creative." Dazai still had a hand free, and he wrapped it around Chuuya's waist so that Chuuya's single-minded lean into his body turned into a hug. He touched Chuuya's nape almost as if he were afraid to break it—twisted his fingers into Chuuya's hair and pulled, gentle. Chuuya raised his head reluctantly. "That's actually the cutest thing I've ever seen you do," Dazai said.

His tone was conversational but his face was flushed, his pupils dilated. His mouth wet from Chuuya's mouth.

Chuuya pulled him down again with something too close to a moan tightening in his throat, and this time, when Dazai licked into his mouth, he let him.

Both of Dazai's hands grabbed him by the hips and pulled him in as they kissed, tugged the bottle green shirt up to touch skin, and Chuuya breathed out harshly against Dazai's mouth at the feeling alone. Warmth was dragging down from his face and to his belly; he nipped Dazai's lip, opened his eyes, and wasn't surprised to find Dazai looking right back at him with nothing but heat.

Chuuya licked his lips, tongue brushing Dazai's, and said, "Wanna take this to bed?"

Dazai's eyes darkened even more.

Chuuya didn't struggle when Dazai pulled him in by the searing hands he had on his hips and tugged the green shirt above his head. He smiled, skin prickling with goosebumps from the air conditioning's harsh touch, and then Dazai hooked a finger under his choker, at his nape, and _pulled_.

He couldn't help the low sound that left his lips as he followed, let his head fall back and bared his neck.

"Fuck," Dazai said, mouthing at his jawline, right under his ear. "I've wanted to do that for years."

"Why do you think I wear it," Chuuya replied with a grin, and was rewarded when Dazai tugged again, the metal buckle pressing warmly into Chuuya's throat.

Dazai's hand dropped down to link under his thighs and lift him, and Chuuya let him, wrapped his legs around Dazai's hips and crushed their mouths together as soon as they were level. Dazai moaned, low in his throat, probably from feeling just how enthusiastic Chuuya was against his hipbone. He crossed the few meters separating them from the bed and climbed on it with Chuuya still locked around him—until Chuuya pushed him sideways onto the mattress, to the side he hadn't slept on.

His hands bore his weight on either side of Dazai's head when he bent down. He did it too fast, and Dazai spluttered at the mouthful of hair he got instead of lips, had to push it out of Chuuya's burning face so they could kiss properly. Chuuya closed his eyes and leaned bodily onto him—elbows instead of hands on the mattress, his chest touching Dazai's and their legs tangled together. For a while they just kissed, languid and slow, like teenagers would. Dazai pushed back against the pillow when he needed to breathe, and Chuuya rose to tuck his hair back uselessly. It always fell back down, because Dazai wouldn't stop touching it.

Chuuya hadn't known intimacy more perfect than the feeling of Dazai's damp mouth hitting his chin when he slipped forward accidentally. He had never known sloppiness more enjoyable than that of their kisses, wet, warm, messy.

His whole body felt heated and slow by the time he drew his legs forward to kneel. Dazai's breathing was unhurried. His face relaxed.

Chuuya felt his eyelids droop from the simple pleasure of seeing him like this, felt all the aches in his body disappear and leave him almost drowsy in their wake. He lifted a hand to touch Dazai's cheek; smiled when Dazai turned his head to nuzzle his palm and press his lips at the center of it.

"Sap," he commented.

"Never said I wasn't," Dazai replied with a laugh. "I love your hands."

Chuuya's face burned anew, and he took his hand back. "And here I thought you had something for my hair."

"I have something for all of you, I think."

Chuuya huffed. "You sure didn't look like it as a kid."

"Come on, Chuuya," Dazai said. He grabbed Chuuya's choker between his fingers again to tug him downward and kiss his cheek. His breath was hot against Chuuya's face when he spoke. "You know you're attractive, I wasn't going to give you ammunition by admitting it."

"There's a middle ground between telling me you have a crush on me and telling the whole world you think I'm ugly," Chuuya replied, lips shivering into a smile.

"Did I hurt your teenage feelings?"

" _No_ , asshole." Not like that, at least.

But Chuuya didn't want to think about that. He kissed Dazai again, slow and hot, ground his hip into Dazai's and felt the sigh that Dazai let out rush over his face. Dazai found Chuuya's hand by his head and linked their fingers together. "I do love your hands," he repeated into Chuuya's mouth. "I didn't realize how much until we fought that monster the other day."

Chuuya put some distance between them so he could look at Dazai's face.

Dazai looked back and continued, "You didn't have any bruises. It made me realize that I couldn't even remember a time I'd seen you without bruises."

His hand squeezed Chuuya's, dragging some phantom ache out of the almost-faded marks on it.

"You're ridiculous," Chuuya said softly.

Dazai smiled at him.

His neck was surprisingly unscarred, except for the long white stroke underlining his jaw. Chuuya pressed his mouth to it, flicked his tongue against it, felt Dazai's chest jump underneath his. He ground his hips down again and locked his thighs around Dazai's hips so he wouldn't fall down; then he dragged his hands down Dazai's chest until he could grab the hem of his shirt and pull it up.

* * *

It took a long while for Dazai to find his breathing once they were both done. He spent it looking at Chuuya in silence as if trying to burn the image of him into his mind. He rubbed Chuuya's thighs with his thumbs before he pulled out—and then he leaned down, and pressed a kiss just above Chuuya's bellybutton.

Chuuya didn't hear the words Dazai whispered into his skin. But he felt the flick of his tongue, the heat of his mouth, and thought that he didn't need to. Dazai stepped out of the bed with a last lingering touch and ventured into the room, sighing loudly.

Chuuya shifted to his side and watched him throw the condom away, eyes following the lines of his body and catching at the red marks he had left on him. Dazai walked into the bathroom for a moment afterward. He came out with a wet towel in hand.

"Thanks," Chuuya said as he handed it over. He wiped his stomach and hands with it before letting it fall where his clothes lay.

The whole bed was a little damp from their sweat, so it wasn't any use trying to look for a dry spot. Chuuya pushed himself to the other side anyway, in the hope of Dazai joining him, which he did. Both of them lay on their front and looked at each other.

Chuuya blinked sleepily when Dazai pushed the hair out of his face. "Isn't it bad for you to spend the night here?" he asked.

"Mmh. There isn't much of the night left."

Chuuya punched Dazai's shoulder lightly. "I meant leaving Q alone for hours."

"I don't think Ango's going to be bothering us."

It was the same conclusion Chuuya himself had come to, but the thought didn't abate his unease. He turned his head to the other side so he wouldn't have to look at Dazai again, eyeing the white shine of the city just under the night sky through the window.

He felt Dazai's hand on his spine. "Why did you stop me?" Dazai asked softly. There was no need to ask what he was referring to.

"You're a bigger idiot than I thought if you can't figure it out yourself," Chuuya mumbled into the pillow.

"I want to hear you say it."

And years ago, Chuuya wouldn't have. He'd have thrown Dazai out of his home, or thrown himself out of Dazai's home, and cut the truth of his caring to the quick before it risked leaving his lips.

But Dazai was next to him. They were naked and languid, skin covered in their mixed sweat, the taste of Chuuya on Dazai's lips and the ache of Dazai in Chuuya's backside. Dazai's hand stroking his back warmly.

So he looked at him again and said, "I don't want you to go back to how you were when you left."

There was no surprise on Dazai's face; only affection, clear as streamwater.

Chuuya pushed himself up with his elbow and kissed him. He didn't open his mouth and didn't close his eyes—instead he watched Dazai's eyelids shut and felt his hand caress his nape, his fingers tangle in his hair. When he pulled back, Dazai's eyes stayed close.

Chuuya said, "I've wanted to do that for years," against Dazai's mouth.

"I know," Dazai replied.

The shape of his smile felt so very warm.


	4. Part IV

Warnings: non-graphic discussion of pedophilia (regarding Mori's character).

* * *

 **Owe No Debt  
** **Part IV**

Sunlight woke Chuuya. It shone through his eyelids until slumber wore off and made wet tears cling to his eyelashes when he blinked. He dragged his hand from under his pillow to rub them off and yawn. Then he pushed a foot back toward the other side of the bed, looking for the warm, rough skin of Dazai's legs.

He didn't find it.

Ice slithered down his throat. Chuuya stared resolutely through the window instead of looking back, no matter that daylight burned in his eyes. His body lacked the specific imprint of heat that came from being held, even though he remembered Dazai's arm around him, Dazai's hand over his moving chest. Holding him as if to make sure he breathing didn't stop while he slept.

Dazai must have left a while ago. Gone as quick as morning mist. Chuuya buried his face into the soft of the pillow, feeling cold like he hadn't in four years, the skin of his stomach seared from the lies that Dazai had kissed into it and which he had _stupidly_ believed to be the truth.

He felt too old to cry from a broken heart, too old to cry at all, so he didn't. He just ached.

He should've known better than to let Dazai access more of him. He had been wiser as a teenager than he was as an adult, keeping Dazai at bay as he had, and now he had nothing to blame for how shattered he felt. He had bared everything for a single moment of weakness—for the sight of Dazai's eyes looking at his lips with longing and childish want—and it was his own fault that he now lay broken-ribbed and flayed, alone in a hotel room, twisted in sheets that still smelled of their coupling.

Chuuya took in a shaking breath. He ignored the ringing of blood in his ears as he sat up, facing the window rather than the room as if he could delay the truth of how empty the bed was that way—and he almost jumped out of his skin when someone grabbed his shoulder.

That he didn't lash out to kill was nothing short of a miracle. Maybe it was the sorrow pooling inside him, maybe it was the soreness in his thighs and hips from having Dazai inside of his body and soul, but Chuuya sat still as a statue. The hand on his shoulder squeezed, traveled down his arm, linked their fingers together. Chuuya felt its owner sit down onto the bed behind him.

"Sorry," Dazai said softly. His hair was wet against Chuuya's shoulder when he leaned his head down to breathe into the side of his neck. "Had to go check up on Q."

Chuuya thought over the words until they made sense, skin prickling with goosebumps from the AC and sunlight; and then hot blood rushed to his head, dizzying.

He tugged his hand out of Dazai's hold with a huff and let himself fall onto the bed again, back still turned to him. It didn't deter Dazai from touching him—his hand came to rest on the side of Chuuya's neck. "Were you watching me sleep?" Chuuya mumbled. "Creep."

"Can you blame me? You look fetching when you're not throwing insults."

Chuuya knew it was a bad idea, but he let Dazai pull him sideways until he lay flat on his back, and the first sight he got of Dazai was that of his eyes widening from whatever it was he read on Chuuya's own face.

Dazai chuckled hollowly. "I really did a number on you, didn't I," he murmured.

They both knew he wasn't talking about love bites or a sore backside, and Chuuya didn't bother with denial or agreement.

Dazai was sitting sideways on the mattress, his feet still touching the floor. He had to strain forward a little when he cupped a hand around Chuuya's cheek, palm stroking his jaw and fingers hooking a few strands of hair behind Chuuya's ear. His nails scratched lightly against his scalp in the process.

"You look really good," Dazai offered. His smile was lighter now, teasing into a smirk at the corners.

Chuuya snorted. "Do you get off to my abandonment issues?"

Dazai's smile widened. He leaned down, legs hoisted onto the bed too now, hand leaving Chuuya's face to rest beside it onto the sheets. "I get off to you naked in my bed, all moody because you just woke up, sun shining all over you…" he trailed off, nose pressed into Chuuya's hair above his temple.

"Not your bed," Chuuya replied, closing his eyes.

"It's the one I slept in."

Chuuya put a hand between them when he felt Dazai's mouth brush down his face, palm over his lips and nails digging lightly into his cheek. "I'm not kissing you until I've had breakfast or brushed my teeth," he declared.

Dazai licked his palm, making Chuuya scrunch his nose in disgust. "That can be arranged," he replied.

He didn't get off the bed, though. His back shifted with a crack that made Chuuya smirk and Dazai sigh, and he kneeled on it, both hands splayed by Chuuya's shoulders as he pressed his mouth into Chuuya's neck. Chuuya was cool from the AC and the lack of him, and Dazai's mouth was warm, scorching shivers with every press of his lips, tongue flicking out to lick the marks he had no doubt left the night previous.

He could get used to this, he thought. Chuuya put a hand at Dazai's nape, parted his fingers through soft, shower-wet hair. Dazai breathed heat back into his body, and Chuuya thought he could get used to this, could envision waking up every morning of his life with the weight of Dazai over him. With the shape of him on his heart.

"Dazai," he said lowly.

Dazai hummed. He kissed the hollow of his throat and then under his chin, forcing Chuuya to strain his head back and look at the off-white ceiling of the hotel room as he gathered the resolve to say what needed to be said.

Chuuya tightened his grip on Dazai's hair. "Dazai," he repeated. "We can't do this."

One time could be put behind.

One time away from Yokohama, in the mediocre hotel they had booked during a time of truce, could be forgiven and forgot. Cradled in the space between Chuuya's ribs like every other secret he had held. Put to rest alongside the memory of his mother or of Odasaku. Dazai could go on with his trek toward righteousness and know that he'd settled another loose end on his way.

Chuuya could deal with being left behind after one time like he had dealt with everything else before. It was easier too, now, with the certainty that Dazai had respected him enough not to run away in the dark of the night. He trusted in his own ability not to falter.

He would owe no debt and hold no grudge.

"There you go again," Dazai said softly.

His head rose above Chuuya's. Chuuya met his eyes evenly in spite of the heat rumbling through him; Dazai's were warm in the chilly morning light, softer even than they had been when he whispered hopeless affection into the skin of Chuuya's belly.

"We don't have to think about this now," he continued. His hand came back to Chuuya's face, dry, cool skin against the flush of his cheek. "We can just enjoy it."

"You're pretty stupid for a so-called genius," Chuuya replied dryly.

"I'm smart enough to know that you're not being rational."

Chuuya batted Dazai's hand away from his face with a sneer. "What about 'we're enemies and probably shouldn't have sex' sounds irrational to you, Dazai?"

"The part where you're terrified of letting yourself have what you _want_."

Chuuya fell silent and still under him, voice caught in his mouth the way the blanket caught around his hips. Pressed thin by Dazai's weight over him. Dazai leaned a little further down, until they were inches apart.

"Tell me truthfully," he said, "whether you're scared of standing on opposite sides of a battlefield, or scared of letting me in more than before. Tell me you're not afraid that I'll leave you behind after you've given me everything." He touched Chuuya's neck with the pads of his fingers, light as a shiver. "Tell me you're just being level-headed and practical, Chuuya, and I won't waste my time trying to convince you otherwise."

He never blinked, as if he didn't feel the need to—as if Chuuya wasn't having to flutter his eyelids open and shut again and again to escape him. Chuuya clenched his teeth and said, "And I'm being irrational for being afraid of _you leaving_?"

"You're not," Dazai replied immediately. "It's perfectly understandable. I've left you many times." His thumb stroked Chuuya's chin. "I'll probably do it again."

Chuuya felt the sting of his words deep inside his chest, the overwhelming shame of having believed, the need to say _Please_ despite knowing that he would be ignored.

He wanted to close his eyes. Wanted to let the scared child in him reign over him just for a moment, just for a second, long enough to insult Dazai with the words burning at his lips. But all he did was stare into Dazai's eyes above him and try and translate without words just how hollow he felt.

Dazai's hand was cradling, kind against his neck. The gentlest noose. "This is something we have in common," he told Chuuya with a smile. "We know there's nothing in this world worth wanting as much as we do, but we still do."

Chuuya did close his eyes, then, teeth ground together to the point of pain. "I wish I'd never met you," he let out.

"Liar." Dazai framed his face between his hands, thumbs pressed into the corners of Chuuya's eyes as if to wipe inexistent wetness away.

And, truly, why bother deny it? Trying to erase Dazai from his memories would leave Chuuya less loved and less whole.

He relented to the kisses Dazai pressed onto his eyelids and his lips, a closed-mouth breeze that rekindled the lost heat of before, and opened his eyes again when Dazai let his weight fall onto him the way he had with his cock in him hours ago.

"We gave up on normal a long time ago," Dazai said against his chin, then against his throat. "Right now we aren't even at war. It's just you and me, Chuuya."

"Are you saying we'll figure it out?" Chuuya knew his voice was mocking.

"I'm saying you're naked under me, and you've had me naked under you, and I've wanted that too much to let it go now that I have it." Dazai looked up again. "Don't you think?"

Chuuya stared back at him for a long second. "I think," he said, "that you owe me a damn apology, for talking so fucking much when I'm still half-asleep."

The glee that brightened Dazai's eyes shot through him like an arrow, the tip of which buried itself at the lowest of his belly, too fast and too warm.

"Now," Dazai purred. "I wonder how I could make it up to you."

Chuuya grabbed him by the hair instead of answering, tugged him downward in a silent command. Dazai obeyed it sweetly.

* * *

Chuuya ended up being the one to press Dazai close first over breakfast. He licked the taste of coffee from Dazai's smart mouth, pressed him down into the bed, and tied his own hair back so nothing would interrupt the unhurried pace of their kissing. It was what he hadn't let himself have the night before through the headiness of having Dazai at all; and Chuuya wasn't so self-assured as to speak devotion, wasn't so foolish as to let himself be this hopeful, but he kissed Dazai, over and over, like he thought someone loved would. Every unspoken word gliding over Dazai's tongue in a way one as smart as Dazai ought to understand.

Dazai didn't let him reciprocate the morning's pleasures. He lay on the sheets with his hair in disarray and his eyes closed and his mouth open, hands holding Chuuya's hips without ever moving. Just to feel him.

"This is the worst mistake I've ever made," Chuuya told him in a whisper.

"Probably," Dazai agreed. He grabbed Chuuya's ass, smirking when Chuuya slapped his hand off. "But you're still making it."

"Yeah. Fucker."

Dazai kissed him, sucked his lip between his own, no sharp retort coming out.

Chuuya couldn't have told whether afternoon came fast or slow. Every new hour on the broken digital clock of his room felt like he could breathe less anyway.

Eventually, Dazai's phone rang.

Dazai answered the call with his eyes caught in Chuuya's and his hand still holding him. Chuuya didn't take in any of the words he said, just held still above him, still naked from the waist up. Dazai dropped the phone next to them after hanging up and stared at him silently for a long moment.

"Kunikida's on his way," he declared uselessly.

Chuuya nodded. He watched the lines of Dazai's face below him to commit them to memory, steeled his spine for the prospect of untangling his legs from Dazai and standing again, skin bare of his touch once more and maybe forever.

Dazai tripped him when he did try to move away, making him fall on top of him entirely and bite his own tongue in the process.

" _Ow_ ," he let out, tasting blood.

"Oops," Dazai replied.

Chuuya elbowed him in the stomach as he rose again, seething. "You _asshole_ ," he growled, "why the fuck do I even bother? Piece of shit."

"I liked it better when you were complimenting my mouth." Dazai was smiling without a care in the world as he said it.

"Well I'm never fucking doing that again."

Dazai pushed himself into a sitting position with his hands. Infuriatingly, Chuuya was barely taller than him despite kneeling above him.

"Let's not think this over too much, yeah?" he asked.

There was no malice in his eyes no matter how much Chuuya looked for it. Dazai would never look carefree, never look _innocent_ , but now, he didn't look like he was hurting. He didn't look like a dying man.

The bottomless despair was being kept at bay.

Chuuya hooked his fingers into Dazai's collar to bring him close once more. He avoided the easy, natural way Dazai offered his mouth to him to press his lips onto his cheek instead.

"Yeah," he said as he pulled away.

Dazai's hand squeezed his hip warmly. When Chuuya got off the bed, it let go gradually, finger by finger.

Kunikida joined them directly in Dazai's hotel room. Q still looked confused and scared, his wary eyes following Chuuya around the room as if he couldn't believe that he was truly being let go. Chuuya didn't speak to him and tried not to let the fact that he was such an obvious source of childish terror get to him.

Unfortunately, he couldn't avoid Kunikida Doppo quite as well.

"You're letting him go," the man said, reeking of suspicion.

"Chuuya and I reached an agreement," Dazai interjected smoothly. "We just need to make it look like we took Q by force."

Kunikida absorbed the information with the look of someone who had just bitten into a lemon. "You're betraying the port mafia?"

"Not on your life," Chuuya replied with a snort. "The little brat's more trouble than he's worth. I'll happily let the lot of you get murdered at his hand instead of us."

"I won't murder them," Q whimpered.

"Murder is bad," Dazai nodded. "And can I just say that it's really, _really_ weird to see the two of you together and talking?"

Chuuya and Kunikida both threw him a tired look.

Chuuya had packed his things already. Not that much needed packing in the first place. He was still wearing the clothes Dazai had bought, this time a red shirt that Chuuya suspected Dazai had picked for less-than-wholesome reasons, judging by the glances he kept giving it.

"I've got shit to settle with Sakaguchi," Chuuya declared. "Since I wasn't really supposed to hurt him and all that. So I'm gonna stay here for a little longer."

"Relieving news."

"Don't push you damn luck, Dazai."

Kunikida pushed his glasses up on his nose, still looking at Chuuya as though he expected him to explode on them. He had no idea how true his assumption would've been in other circumstances. "All right," he decided. "Dazai, you better write an extensive report about this."

Chuuya could just see the way Dazai's mouth shook, threatening to fall into a grin much too telling. He glared at him until he was sure Dazai could feel the burn of his eyes against the side of his face. "Work him into the ground, Kunikida," he said slowly.

There was a pause. "Right," Kunikida replied, sounding surprised. "I'll go pay for the room downstairs then. You," he pointed to Dazai, "stay put."

No one really took notice of the noise the door made as it closed behind him.

Q sat in his corner, still without his doll, still looking too glaringly like a child instead of a war machine. Dazai met Chuuya's eyes with the sketch of a smile on his lips.

"I guess we won't see each other for a while, then," he said softly.

"Guess we won't."

It was a good thing they had already said goodbye in all the physical ways, Chuuya thought. He didn't think he could've restrained himself from crossing the room and embracing him again otherwise, Q be damned.

Dazai must have seen it on his face, because his expression grew fond, the way it had when they had met for the very first time. "No regrets?" he asked.

Chuuya smiled sharply. "No regrets," he replied.

Regrets had never been of any use to him.

"So, Kunikida," Chuuya said a few minutes later, tugging his gloves in place. Dazai was ushering Q out of the room. "Akutagawa tells me you're good at hand-to-hand."

Kunikida eyed him warily. "I am."

The leather felt good against Chuuya's fingers. The air conditioning had stopped running but the room was still cool from it, and as he took a fighting stance in front of the other, he noticed that the bruises on his arms had completely faded at last.

Kunikida mirrored him with an alarmed look. "What are you doing?" he hissed.

Chuuya's grin stretched wide across his face. "We've still got to make this look like a kidnapping, don't we?" he purred. "Show me what that agency of yours is worth, detective."

* * *

Chuuya came home satisfactorily bruised. His legs and shoulders ached during the whole train ride in that sweet soreness that only ever came from sparring with competent partners. Not even his brief conversation with Sakaguchi Ango had managed to shake the high out of him.

Sakaguchi had been complacent, all things considered. They both agreed that informing the special ability department's chief that Chuuya had used violence on him would be fruitless. Chuuya personally thought that Sakaguchi was happier with the knowledge that Dazai was doing well than he would be with dragging the port mafia through the mud.

Tachihara fetched him from the station, wearing a wide grin and an awful band T-shirt. "'Bout time," he said, opening the door to his car so Chuuya could slide in unbothered. "Everything's so dull at headquarters without you yelling around."

"Watch your cheek, Tachihara," Chuuya replied without heat.

Tachihara's expression didn't fall out of smug satisfaction. "Whatever you say, Chuuya-san."

He laughed when Chuuya gave him the finger.

This was as close as he would ever get to being told _Welcome home_. Chuuya wasn't too bothered by it. He spent the car trip thinking quietly over what he would tell Mori, about whether Mori already knew of Q's now definitive membership within the agency—likely—and whether he knew of what had transpired between Chuuya and Dazai. He wasn't sure Mori would care even if he did.

Yokohama looked its best at sunset, especially from the coast road, which Tachihara drove through without needing to be asked. This way was longer but more pleasant; city lights blurred over the dark water in shades of orange and gold, streaked with neon blue and green like an impressionist's painting. Chuuya drank his fill of the sight, soothed by the rumble of Tachihara's rundown car and the sputtering of its old radio.

He felt warm through the chest when they parked under the black skyscraper that had been his most consistent living space for eleven years. Chuuya pushed himself out of the passenger's seat and stretched his arms above his head until he felt his nape crack. Tension seeped out of him instantly.

"Chuuya-san," Tachihara called behind him. He was holding a sealed envelope in his hands when Chuuya looked back at him. "This is for you."

"What is it?" Chuuya couldn't feel the texture of it through his gloves, but the glossy red paper gave him a hint already.

"It's from Kouyou-sama. An invitation for tea, I think."

Chuuya stared at the envelope in silence long enough that Tachihara frowned in concern. He shook himself out of it before the boy could ask questions, slipped the paper into the deep pocket of his coat and gave the other a brief smile. "Thanks. Now stop slacking and get to work."

"I take time on my _day off_ to go get you 'cos Higuchi was too busy, and this is how you thank me…" Tachihara muttered, but he was smiling.

There were only two kinds of people that Ozaki Kouyou invited for tea. People she cared about and people she planned to kill. Chuuya's thoughts were onto the red envelope as he gave Mori his report, staring unseeingly at the unsettling purple of the man's eyes and trying not to hear the coos of delight that Elise gave off behind him. The girl ignored him, mostly, and Mori made no comment on Dazai whatsoever. The disappointment he expressed wasn't directed at Chuuya so much as a fleeting future, as if he were already thinking very far ahead of the present situation. As if playing a checker game that only he was privy to.

It was ten in the evening by the time Chuuya was set free.

Kouyou's invitation only said _tonight_ , with no other precision. He took the lack of a time limit as an invitation to delay, and walked the way between headquarters and her house. He'd sent Higuchi off with his luggage when she caught him carrying it around and knew he could trust her not to mess with his place. So Chuuya took his time, walked the streets of Yokohama from harbor to center town and beyond, breathing in the sea air and watching the night sky bleed from light blue to deep black. It was a cloudless, moonless night. The stars too shy to pierce too hard through the city's glow.

The woman who guarded the entrance of Kouyou's lavish house nodded at him as he walked through the gates. She breathed a few words into the mic hanging by her mouth, and the front door opened before Chuuya even needed to knock.

He took off his shoes before making his way out of the long hall, socks almost noiseless against the soft of the mats; Kouyou herself slid open the door to the tearoom.

"Welcome," she said lowly. Her lips curled gently at the corners as she took in the obvious sheath of his knife. "You came armed?"

"Am I stupid?" Chuuya replied dryly. "I left the gun behind, if you're wondering."

"You could've left the knife too, but I know how much you care about it." Kouyou kneeled sideways to let him enter, and Chuuya made a beeline for the low table where the cups were already set. His body was still thoroughly relaxed from fighting, so his knees didn't crack as he fell cross-legged on the floor.

He really needed to meet with this Kunikida more.

At least it didn't seem like he was on the kill list for the night. Chuuya said nothing as Kouyou served the tea and didn't touch his own cup until she drank from hers.

"There's no need to be so tense," she said quietly, putting down the cup. "I was hoping we could talk."

Chuuya pressed his fingers against the hot clay. The tea tasted good, as always, no bitter hint hidden in it. He knew Kouyou had ways of poisoning that left no taste on the tongue; however, he hoped she would be kind enough not to get rid of him in such an underhanded way.

The cup clinked brightly against the table. His fingers ached from the heat when he pulled them away. "All right," he replied. "Let's talk."

She gave him a brief smile. "How went the trip? I'm sure you already gave our Boss his due report, but I feel curious as well."

"Fine," Chuuya let out. "We got Q from Sakaguchi, Dazai got Q from me. All within the range of expectations."

"I know better than to try and anticipate anything Dazai does," Kouyou said mildly. Her fingers toyed with the rim of her cup in a surprising show of impropriety, and there was a smile on her lips, fleeting and kind. "He seems hellbent on getting our young away from us lately."

"Maybe we should stop hiring children."

"Maybe we should," she agreed, and Chuuya felt his eyebrows raise in surprise despite himself. "Oh, don't look at me like this, Chuuya-kun," she chided. "Even I can recognize when change is needed."

He made a face. "I didn't mean to imply anything, ane-san."

"I know you didn't. And I know this is hard for the both of us to envision, but we really might need to stay clear of hiring them too young." Her nose scrunched delicately as she spoke her next words: "Especially with a man like Mori Ougai at our head."

Chuuya didn't—couldn't—reply. His relaxed stance turned to a tense one, thighs aching and back taught and jaw clenching reflexively. He almost cleared his throat, chose not to instead, and disbelief lay heavy on his voice as he spoke back. "Those are—very strong words, Kouyou-sama."

"Perhaps," she murmured. He couldn't tear his eyes away from her as she bent down to pick up her tea, to raise it to her mouth. The paint on her lips shone wet when she finished drinking, and her eyes met Chuuya's levelly, powerfully. "But I grow rather tired of watching the man's every move and hoping he never crosses the line. I would rather there be no need for a line at all."

Chuuya's mouth was open as he absorbed what she was saying and implying.

He had no sympathy for Mori Ougai. He never had. The man had done nothing but make him uncomfortable when he was still a doctor, nothing but make him fear when he became a boss, with his creeping words and creeping glances. Chuuya's dislike had grown after meeting Dazai, because Dazai hated Mori with every fiber of his fourteen-year-old being for reasons Chuuya never wished to discover. He had just taken up the Hating Mori cause because it felt right, and he had never let go of it as an adult, regardless of his obedience.

He was an adult, though. And he had long since figured out why Mori had driven fear into his heart when he was still too young to understand.

"I didn't know you cared so much," he said lowly. He found that he couldn't meet the anger and care in her eyes anymore and stared at the table instead.

"Of course I care," she replied. "I was not soft with you, lad, and I am not soft with the children I employ now. But I would have Mori's head on a platter before he could lay a finger on any of you, and that includes Dazai as well."

Something in Chuuya loosened at that, some year-old tension and fear he had never let himself voice, even in the privacy of his own mind. Kouyou noticed it, and her eyes were kind as she said, "He would be dead now if he had done anything to him. You can trust me on this."

He nodded wordlessly.

Drinking more tea gave him an excuse for the burn in his eyes. "Why did you want to see me?" he asked, placing the cup down. He didn't want to think too hard on what she might be intending to do before he got some sleep, and hoped she agreed to the change in topic.

Kouyou relaxed, knees spreading slightly as she did. "We have been at odds with each other since Kyouka left," she replied. "I wanted to see if we could straighten things out."

"I apologize for this. Things have been stressful."

"And I as well. You are so private, Chuuya-kun, it was rude of me to disrespect that." Her mouth softened into a new smile, a nostalgic, heartfelt one. "Will you forgive me if I tell you that you were always my favorite?"

Chuuya felt his face warm. "I can handle that much," he mumbled, and she laughed.

"You were so unlike the others. My girls used to tell me about everything you did even when I did not ask. Absurdly fond of you, the lot of them." By now Chuuya's cheeks must be a steady red, but all Kouyou did was twist a smile at him and continue, "I couldn't well afford to pay more attention to you than my other employees, but you always did catch the eye. So strong-headed, and with such a useful gift. That boy didn't help when he got it into his head that you'd make good partners."

"Yeah, well," Chuuya muttered. "I got what I wanted even without favoritism."

"I never meant to imply otherwise. Everything you've achieved is your own."

He really shouldn't feel so relieved and proud to hear her say that, but he did.

"You look better," she added gently. "You were so tense when you left. Did Kumagaya offer you some respite?"

 _Dazai_ had offered him respite in the shape of heated kisses and muffled words, in the color of the marks still pressed into his collarbones, in the aches of lovemaking. Chuuya met Kouyou's eyes over the lacquered tabletop and said nothing.

She smiled sharply. "You did some shopping. Red looks good on you, surprisingly."

She stared pointedly at the shirt he was wearing, and Chuuya clicked his tongue, face burning pleasantly.

She entertained him with tales of the last few weeks. Chuuya had been gone from the city a long time before Dazai walked back into his life armed with smiles and insults; he had gotten no time to talk to Kouyou in the weeks that had followed, because the Guilt had been there, and because she had mourned for the girl she lost. In truth, he hadn't talked to her so much before in his life.

She acted around him as she would around a friend, he thought. Happy and unabashed. She never cared when she spilled tea on her sleeve and she never cared when he got drunk enough on the wine she took out that swears rolled out of his mouth, sour-sweet on his tongue.

"We should spar one day," he grinned into the brim of his glass. Night was heavy, cicadas gone and lights shut out. Kouyou had opened the glass windows of the tearoom that led out to the finely-cut garden she owned, and they had moved there, sitting on the wooden ledge with their feet hanging down. There was no sound around but the murmur of a small stream and the soft of their voices.

"I don't spar, Chuuya-kun," Kouyou answered. "I don't give out my strengths to people who could one day turn against me."

"I give out my strength so people don't _want_ to turn against me."

She smiled sideways at him. "Let's hope both of our methods work."

"I'll drink to that," he laughed.

The look she gave him next was darker, thoughtful. "You always feel the need to prove yourself," she said. "Even to people who already know your worth."

Chuuya was languid from the wine, with soft heat in all his veins, sore from fighting and fucking, so he admitted the truth: "It feels good to be needed."

"Indeed," Kouyou replied. She didn't mock him for it. "And there are people who do need you. Probably more than you realize."

"Please," he scoffed lightly.

She looked like she was about to reply with something, but then she closed her mouth. Chuuya watched her stare at her own hands for a moment as if debating with herself, before she pushed herself upright to stand.

"Stay here," she told him.

He followed her with his eyes, tilting his glass so the wine touched his lips again. His tongue was dry with it by now. Kouyou went out of the tearoom and disappeared for a few minutes. Chuuya spent the time looking at the stars above, mind blissfully empty.

He heard her sit beside him once more in a shuffle of silk and soft breaths. The turn of his head was lazy when he looked at her and saw the slip of paper she was holding.

"What's that?" he asked.

She didn't immediately answer. Her fingers unfolded the paper with no sound, and she looked at whatever was on it with a thin smile on her lips. "A gift for you," she said. "From Dazai."

Chuuya's back tensed so suddenly that sharp pain throbbed in his neck.

"He gave it to me years ago," she continued without looking at him, not even when he put the glass down next to him and clenched his fingers against the wood. "The little fool never even told me what it was. He just said I should give it to you whenever I thought you'd accept it."

She held the paper up toward him expectantly.

He already knew what it was. He knew the moment she said Dazai's name, perhaps even earlier, from the look she had given him as he admitted his own foolish thoughts to her. Chuuya took the paper from her hands without a word, and it was soft beneath his fingers, free of wrinkles from being handled over and over again. The ink that Dazai had used to write the address was a little faded.

"I've already visited, of course," Kouyou said quietly. "Though I did not know what I would find when I did."

"Of course," Chuuya repeated. He wasn't looking at her anymore. He wasn't even looking at the words on the paper anymore.

Kouyou didn't try to get closer physically or to touch him, and he was grateful for that at least, even if her voice sounded like it wanted to slither under his skin and take refuge there.

"This is someone who needs you," she murmured.

The paper made no sound when he dug his fingers in it. It was too old and worn.

"I should go," Chuuya declared. Kouyou looked pained for a second, and he sent her a brief smile despite the bleak fear coiled in his chest. "I'm tired," he explained. "I'd like to sleep in my own bed for at least a few hours."

"That's understandable."

Gravity held him upright as he stood, and his knees _did_ creak this time. Kouyou walked him back to the door, where a different woman from before stood guard and nodded her head in their direction. Chuuya was already two steps down the front of the house when Kouyou called his name.

"I'd like to have you over for tea again later this week," she told him as he turned back to look at her. "For work and pleasure alike."

There was no need to ask what work she needed him for. Her expression was mild but her eyes were of steel, and Chuuya knew he would not have much time to decide on whether he stood by her side or his boss's.

Chuuya's loyalty was to the port mafia first and foremost. He would take the side of whoever protected it best.

"Sure, ane-san," he replied evenly.

For a second they stood in the stillness that preceded either laugh or murder. But Kouyou shook her head, making strands of red hair escape from the silver pin holding it up, and the curve of her mouth turned whimsical.

"I hope one day you can believe those words, Chuuya-kun," she said. "I hope one day I get to hear you call me sister and mean it."

* * *

He visited the house in the morning.

The docks' mist clung to his clothes as he walked along the seashore, white and ghost-like in the sunlight. Chuuya didn't stop to talk to the familiar early-risers who worked there and hailed him on his way.

It was a tiny thing, stuck in a side of Yokohama that he never visited. There was no business to be had in the far-off residential areas that the mafia could dip into. The house neighbored another to the side and had a small garden behind that he could glimpse from where he stood. He saw the end of a swing in it, wet with dew, swaying gently.

 _Kashiwamura Family_ , the letterbox said.

It was enough.

Chuuya's grip didn't slacken around the paper Kouyou had given him. He watched the house wake up from the other side of the street and felt a little like a ghost himself, shadows shifting under his feet without ever touching him, eyes fixed and unblinking onto what the sun made of the blue entrance door ahead. Light shone from a curtained window downstairs and then flickered on upstairs, and the silhouette that drew against white drapes on the first floor was that of a child.

He pressed himself back into the shadows when the front door opened. Out came a man with unknown features, a tall man who looked nothing like Chuuya's memories and nightmares (short thin ill-tempered _loud_ ), who had to bend down to kiss the lips of the wife who followed him onto the front steps to bid him goodbye. His hand was kind when it rested the woman's shoulder. It was even kinder when it brushed the hair of the little boy who slithered between their legs, dragging a backpack behind him.

It was enough. It was more than enough. It was every hope that Chuuya had harbored in the months that had followed his greatest crime and more. It was proof that he hadn't taken more than one life in that cold morning eleven years ago.

The woman stood alone for a moment in the entrance of her house. Her eyes followed the path that her family made moving away from her, and Chuuya was too far away to read her face, both in years and in distance.

Nakahara Fuku's memory had blurred into nothing in his mind overtime. Scraps of touches and feelings and voices. He couldn't recall the details of her eyes or mouth by the time he was twelve. She stood before him now, older, obviously happier, and Chuuya thought that he might have crossed paths with her one day without knowing who she was and not recognized her at all.

 _She looks so much like you_ , Dazai had told him.

Dazai lied as easily as he breathed.

He thought he saw the woman's eyes roam over the street and stop on him for a second, but he wasn't too worried. Chuuya turned his back on the house and walked the opposite direction that her husband and son had gone. The road dipped down there, following the swell of the hill and heading straight for the sea.

"Hello," someone said.

He didn't startle because a lifetime of training had bled the habit out of him, but his chest clenched, and his heart swelled, and it took a long time for him to turn his head around and meet his mother's eyes.

She was smiling politely at him.

"Hello," he replied carefully.

It made _her_ jump, as if something had shocked the skin off of her. "Sorry," she hurried to say. She took a step forward—he noticed, faintly, that her feet were bare on the wet, cold ground. "Ah—are you new in the neighborhood? I haven't seen you here before."

Her breathing was hurried. Chuuya looked over her quickly to make sure she wasn't hurt, but she seemed fine. Only the dirt under her feet looked out of place. "I'm not," he answered. "I was just… visiting someone."

"I see." He couldn't move away when she stepped forward again, not even when it put her close enough for him to see the shine in her eyes, the wet at her lashes. They had the same eyes. "Family?"

Her voice was trembling.

"Yeah," Chuuya said weakly, staring at her, unable to blink. "Family."

"That's good." Fuku stepped forward again, right into his space, where only one person had stood in the last ten years and lived to tell the tale. Her tears started when she spoke again, "It's good to visit family," the line of her mouth shaking hard.

He didn't move when she fisted a hand into the lapel of his coat and took one last step. She was shorter than him, he found, by an inch or so, her eyes level with his nose.

"I've been waiting for someone to visit for a long time, you see," she weeped. The hand she had put on him was febrile, and Chuuya made no move to dislodge it, nor to avoid the one that touched his cheek as if afraid that he would break.

"I," he said. He didn't know what else to say

Her fingers were wet on his face, and he realized that he was crying too.

Both of her hands framed his face, wiped away his tears, familiar calluses and knobby knuckles pressing into the soft of his cheek, stroking over his ears and hair. Chuuya sucked in a breath like a man drowning at sea.

"He's my son," his mother said, face entirely red and damp fingers caught in Chuuya's hair, thumbs over his cheeks. "He's been missing for a very long time."

"I'm sure he's okay," Chuuya croaked out.

She sobbed as she kissed his cheek, and he felt her chest heave against his and her words die wetly over his skin. "His friends said the same thing. They said he'd come when he was ready."

 _I could never be ready for you_ , Chuuya thought, breathless.

"I'm sorry," he rasped. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry—"

It was as though a dam had broken. The apology tumbled down from his lips over and over, entirely worthless but heavy from how many times he had thought it before, in the dark of the night and staring at the decrepit ceiling of his first not-home, beating himself up during training, seeing the eyes of those who thought him worthy when he was nothing more than a coward, a blood-traitor, a parricide. The lowest of all scum.

"Oh, Chuuya," Fuku cried into his neck. Her arms tightened around him and tugged them down to the ground when her legs gave out, more powerful than any gravity.

Fuku held him like something breakable, like fine china or blown glass, fingers light over his skin, kisses peppered onto his forehead and hair. Chuuya kneeled still in front of her, hands limp by his side because he couldn't touch her. He shouldn't touch her. He had lost that right years ago.

"Chuuya," she said like a prayer, forehead pressed against his.

He wrapped his arms around her back. She was the softest thing he had ever held.

"I'm sorry." His next breath was a wheeze. "For everything that I've done. If I could go back—"

She rubbed his left eye with her thumb, shushing him, smearing wetness against his temple. "My love," she whispered roughly, "you have nothing to apologize for."

His eyes pressed shut against the hot rush of tears that he felt trickle down his face, and he buried his mouth into her shoulder.

"I've missed you so much," she said, rocking gently in place.

She squeezed her arms around him when she felt his shoulders shake, and the hand she put at his nape seared warmth through his body, the _I love you_ s at his ear filling the wretched, rotten corners of his soul with light.

Someone walked out of the house behind them and looked at them with wide eyes, kneeling as they were on the dirty pavement, locked in an unending embrace.

Chuuya didn't care.

Eventually she would help him up and ask him to join her inside. She would want to show him her new life, she would try to make him meet the boy she must already think of as his little brother, perhaps even her new husband. She'd try to feed him and hold on to him and cry when he would have to leave. She'd be disappointed to learn that he was nothing like the little boy who had fled away from her at eleven, burning with fear and guilt and shame.

He didn't know what he would do then. He wasn't ready for more than this—he wasn't ready for _this_. But just once, just for a while, Chuuya emptied his mind of all concerns. He kneeled against the painful, cold pavement of this unknown street, the morning's fog thinning around him and sunlight warming his nape, and he let himself be held in the arms of his mother.

He let himself be loved unconditionally.

* * *

 **From: Slug [2:14PM]  
** You're a meddling bastard.

 **From: Slug [2:17PM]**  
Thank you.

 **To: Slug [5:36PM]  
** You're welcome. See you next truce, partner.


End file.
